Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century -- see the Harvard University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk -- is surely one of, if not the book of the year in the US.
It is, of course, an economics book -- but also refers to actual literature.
At Slate Ted Underwood, Hoyt Long, and Richard Jean So now consider what Piketty has to say about literature (and, in particular, money in fiction) in his book, in Cents and Sensibility.
They argue that:
Also interesting/strange to note that "the median reference to money" (i.e. the specific amount mentioned) has decreased tremendously over the same period.
They argue that:
Piketty's account of literary history turns out to be wrong -- but wrong in a way that casts a surprising new light on the way novels do respond to the changing economic fortunes of people in the real world.Yes, interestingly:
References to specific sums increased in frequency from 1825 to 1950, undeterred by the accelerating pace of inflation.(And Eliot's Middlemarch is a somewhat surprisingly money-obsessed outlier.)
Also interesting/strange to note that "the median reference to money" (i.e. the specific amount mentioned) has decreased tremendously over the same period.