Coinage and State Formation in Early Modern English Literature

STEPHEN DENG is an Assistant Professor of English at Michigan State University, USA.

"A pertinent and timely intervention in the debate concerning the nature of money in Renaissance England. Through an impressively broad array of literary and cultural readings, Deng clearly establishes the vital role money played in the process of state formation. His insights into the relation between coinage and idolatry, tyranny, and the ethics of representation have obvious repercussions for our own age, and make this book important to anyone concerned about the current state of capitalism. This book is sure to remain influential on literary and economic studies for many years to come." - David Hawkes, Professor of English, Arizona State University "Deng s book offers a detailed and fresh reappraisal of early modern coinage - what both Shakespeare and Marx call the visible god - as the turnstile through which radically opposed concepts of matter and spirit, economics and religion, and intrinsic and extrinsic value endlessly circulate. Deng s singular contribution is to show how this circulation subtends modern formations of nationhood and sovereignty." - Jonathan Gil Harris, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of English, George Washington University

• Introduction: Rough Economies: The Politics and Poetics of Coinage Dimensions of State Formation More's Utopia and the Logic of Debasement: Reason, Custom and Natural Laws of Coinage The Great Debasement and its Aftermath Coining Crimes and Moral Regulation in Measure for Measure 'Mysteries of State': The Political Theology of Money in Macbeth Foreign Coins and Domestic Exclusion in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday Conclusion: The Changing Matter of Money