The Rhetoric of Credit

"An ability to accumulate capital is explained by literary and mercantile texts as the result of careful self-presentation. In the early modern period, credit becomes negotiable; divorced from the person of the trader it represents the value of his public ethos, measured by the funds and interest rate available to him. An acceptance of his credit is the merchant's most valuable asset, and one which merchant handbooks seek to protect." "Recent influential work on Jacobean city comedies, by Jean-Christophe Agnew and Douglas Bruster in particular, is confined to the well-worn topics of urban alienation and the avaricious merchant, drawing on 1550s sermons and tracts against usury. In this model, where social credit is deemed to circulate without limit, the city comedy's specific reference to contemporary ideas of trade, cash, and credit is lost. The plays are reduced to moral satires against greed, humoural comedies of the hollow self, or self-referencing literary artifacts which create and interact with a coterie audience. Aging rants against avarice might account for earlier interludes which mock usurers and misers, but not for the slick, formal pleasures of the city comedy, bringing together gull, courtesan, prodigal gallant, virgin daughter, and jealous citizen father or husband."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved