Publication Date
2003
Journal or Book Title
English Literary History
Abstract
Recent work in eighteenth-century studies has been notoriously preoccupied by what seem to be striking metaphorical resonances between economic and aesthetic 'spheres of practice,' but, as I argue in my paper, it is the confounding of these analogies that may be most salient. Although Edgeworth's Belinda has been frequently read as demystifying aristocratic codes by replacing sharp sociality with good-natured bourgeois instruction, I show that this text imagines the difference between bourgeois and gift economies not as the substitution of humor's instructive mirth for wit's arch conceits, but as a spectacular encounter between the two.
DOI
10.1353/elh.2003.0022
Pages
575-596
Volume
70
Issue
2
Recommended Citation
Rosenberg, Jordana, "The Bosom of the Bourgeoisie: Edgeworth's Belinda" (2003). English Literary History. 16.
10.1353/elh.2003.0022
Comments
Doi:10.1353/elh.2003.0022