Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700–1860 by Timothy Ablorn

IF 0.3 4区 历史学 Q2 HISTORY
Peter J. Katz
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The cultural representation of misers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may be a niche interest, but Alborn’s Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700–1860 offers a valuable contribution to general historiography in the age of digital research. Alborn traces how the perception of misers shifted across his selected period: Sermons and poems decried misers’ moral failings; ethicists and economists gave ambivalent acceptance; plays, operas, and novels made them social pariahs and punchlines; and nineteenth-century biographies and novels considered their pecuniary acumen. This exploration marks an important case study in the intersection between capitalism and popular literature and culture. Alborn accurately notes, however, that it does not “address either the formation or distribution of capital” in an economic sense (11). Instead, the book explores how British culture represented misers to themselves. Although this intervention adds important layers to the already thick description of capitalism’s cultural influence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Alborn’s book deserves both accolades and scrutiny for a methodology based on both a distant reading of genres and a close reading of individual texts to prove its claims. The scope of Alborn’s archive is staggering. The first four chapters are organized around genre. Although the organization of the latter three is more scattershot, all the chapters range across genres with the same alacrity. The variance comes from Alborn’s interest in “boundarydrawing: when did someone qualify as a miser ...?” (11). Part of the cleverness of Alborn’s approach is that he allows the texts to create this boundary for him, rather than imposing a definition. But allowing a culture to unveil its structure is always a historiographically complex task. In a critique of her own book, Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1830–1864 (Chicago, 1994), Poovey challenges textual analysis as a proper basis for cultural history: “No amount of evidence of the kind [textual criticism] supplies ... would be sufficient to prove” broad historical claims. In other words, if four sermons are inadequate to prove
《悲惨世界:英国对极端拯救的回应》,1700-1860,作者Timothy Ablorn
18和19世纪吝啬鬼的文化表现可能是一个利基的兴趣,但阿尔伯恩的吝啬鬼:英国人对极端储蓄的反应,1700-1860,为数字研究时代的一般史学提供了宝贵的贡献。阿尔伯恩追溯了对守财奴的看法在他所选择的时期是如何转变的:布道和诗歌谴责守财奴的道德缺陷;伦理学家和经济学家对此表示矛盾的接受;戏剧、歌剧和小说使他们成为社会的贱民和笑柄;19世纪的传记和小说考虑到了他们对金钱的敏锐。这一探索是研究资本主义与大众文学文化交集的一个重要案例。然而,阿尔伯恩准确地指出,在经济意义上,它并没有“解决资本的形成或分配问题”(11)。相反,这本书探讨了英国文化如何代表守财奴自己。尽管这种介入为已经很厚的资本主义在18和19世纪的文化影响的描述增加了重要的层次,但阿尔伯恩的书值得赞扬和审视,因为它的方法是基于对流派的远读和对个别文本的近读来证明其主张的。阿尔伯恩的档案规模惊人。前四章围绕体裁展开。尽管后三本书的组织比较散漫,但所有章节都以同样的敏捷性涵盖了各种类型。这种差异来自阿尔伯恩对“划定界限”的兴趣:什么时候一个人有资格成为吝啬鬼?”(11)。阿尔伯恩方法的聪明之处在于,他允许文本为他创造这个边界,而不是强加一个定义。但是,让一种文化揭示其结构始终是一项复杂的历史任务。在对她自己的书《形成一个社会主体:英国文化形成,1830-1864》(芝加哥,1994)的评论中,Poovey对文本分析作为文化史的适当基础提出了质疑:“没有多少[文本批评]提供的那种证据……足以证明“广泛的历史主张”。换句话说,如果四个布道不足以证明
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
20.00%
发文量
68
期刊介绍: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History features substantive articles, research notes, review essays, and book reviews relating historical research and work in applied fields-such as economics and demographics. Spanning all geographical areas and periods of history, topics include: - social history - demographic history - psychohistory - political history - family history - economic history - cultural history - technological history
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