Shakespeare's Twenty-First Century economics : the morality of love and money
"In this book, Frederick Turner argues that we need a new, humane, evolutionary economics - a capitalism with a human face - that fully expresses the moral, spiritual, and aesthetic relationships among persons and things. As Turner demonstrates, that new economy was envisaged centuries ago in poetic terms by William Shakespeare." "If we should revise our old, heartless notions of economics, Turner asks, must we find a new language for it? The answer, as Shakespeare shows, is no. Buried within our apparently cold language of finance and business are living meanings. Such words as "bond," "trust," "good," "save," "value," "means," "redeem," "dear," "interest," "honor," "company," "worth," "thrift," "use," "will," "partner," "deed," "fair," "owe," "ought," "treasure," "risk," "royalty," and "venture" contain a pattern of moral obligations and social emotions. Personal bonds and hard-headed business transactions need not occupy separate worlds; we forget at our peril that a nation is also a commonwealth." "Using close readings of the Sonnets, The Winter's Tale, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra, Turner provides a lexicon of common words and a variety of familial and cultural situations in an economic context."--Jacket
Criticism, interpretation, etc
viii, 223 pages ; 24 cm
9780195128611, 0195128613
39849300
1. Introduction: Understanding Money
2. "Great Creating Nature": How Human Economics Grows Out of Natural Increase
3. "Nothing Will Come of Nothing": The Love Bond and the Meaning of the Zero. 4. "My Purse, My Person": How Bonds Connect People and Property, Souls and Bodies
5. "The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strained": Why Justice Must Be Lubricated with Mercy. 6. "Never Call a True Piece of Gold a Counterfeit": How Does One Stamp a Value on a Coin and Make It Stick?
7. "Thou Owest God a Death": Debt, Time, and the Parable of the Talents. 8. "Bounty ... That Grew the More for Reaping": Why Creation Enters into Bonds
9. "Dear Life Redeems You": The Economics of Resurrection
10. "O Brave New World": Shakespeare and the Economic Future