The Reverse of Images (By Way of an Introduction)

Abstract

Money—as many of the texts collected in this volume may attest— has often been dramatized, used as a theme, and represented in art. From The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare to Hollywood productions such as The Wolf of Wall Street, money circulates like a quasicharacter. Occasionally, it might even become the protagonist of a story, speaking in the first person, as in Charles Gildon’s The Golden Spy, which in 1702 became the precursor of the British tradition which lends a narrative voice to inanimate objects. In this work, Gildon makes four coins speak; one of them, the French “Louis d’or”, thus says: “I have had such various transmigrations thro’ the great World.”1 Many other stories have followed suit, such as The Adventures of a Silver Penny in 1786, Argentum: or, Adventures of a Shilling in 1794 and Aureus; or The Life and Opinions of a Sovereign, Written by Himself in 1824. But money is not just a literary object or subject (or a prosopopeia). In its “autobiography” published in 1770,2 a bank note bragged about its ability to “coin words”. And when authors like Herman Melville or Paul Valéry represent the intrinsically fiduciary dimension of narrative or of language,