The Face of Mammon studies the gold and silver coins of sixteenth-century England as they are articulated in literary writing. Landreth argues that the coinage of the sixteenth century is a very different object from the money that we know-- not only formally but conceptually, in that modern money is the object proper to a discourse, economics, that had not yet taken shape in the sixteenth century. Instead, a Renaissance coin is an arena contested among multiple early modern discourses that each seek to encompass it, such as ontology, ethics, and politics. The writers central to this study--among them Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Nashe, and Donne--use the coin to demonstrate the interdependence of these competing discourses as they converge upon a single, ubiquitous object. For these authors, an understanding of the world that humans make for themselves relies upon understanding how the material world is made. The small circumference of the coin brings these contending worlds into contact.

About the Author
David Landreth is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.

Reviews
[a] thoroughly researched and compellingly framed study finely conceived * Barbara Sebek, Review of English Studies *
a theoretically and historically rigorous account ... The Matter of Money is brilliant, wide-ranging, difficult, and sometimes exhilarating; it is a book that makes a major contribution to recent scholarship on economy and material culture. * Garrett A. Sullivan, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *
[An] important study ... there is no more topical concern today than the morality of capitalist finance, and works such as these can teach us how that force was regarded by the first generations to be exposed to its power. * David Hawkes, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *
a fascinating historicist account of early modern English coins and their place in the literature of this period ... penetreting and lively ... much more than a study of the sixteenth-century English economy, ambitious that alone would be. Landreth shows how something as ubiquitous in the culture as money is pervasive in the literature, too. * Sarah Dewar-Watson, Times Literary Supplement *
[a] striking, consistently intelligent study ... this is a book that Elizabethanists in general, and Shakespeareans in particular, will not want to miss ... Highly recommended. * E.D. Hill, Choice *
The Face of Mammon is an important and timely book, relevant both for how it illuminates the often neglected historicity of money and for its strikingly original and persuasive new readings of how currency functions in some of the most studied works of Elizabethan literature. * Peter Remien, Spenser Review *
compelling and wide-ranging readings * Cordula Lemke, Shakespeare Jahrbuch *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199773299
Author David Landreth
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 624g
Dimensions(mm) 165mm * 239mm * 33mm