In recent years the metaphor of economy has proved to have an immense explanatory power in literary and cultural criticism. Everything can be expressed and analysed in terms borrowed from political economy. Language, texts, social structures, and cultural relationships can be construed in the dynamic terms made available by the metaphor of economy, and, more specifically, the economy of the metaphor. The metaphor of economy allows to show the dynamic processes of exchange, circulation and interested negotiation. The essays in this volume display approaches to cultural and discursive practices derived from the methods and texts of economics. They provide a body of literary and cultural criticism founded upon economic paradigms, which makes apparent the genealogy of our economic thought and the suggestion that looking at human exchange can enrich our understanding of culture. The interest of this volume is manifold: it gives a historical account of the development! of economics, elucidates the emergence of theories governed by economic metaphors and clarifies the impact of the metaphor on theories of textuality. It also provides an exchange between economists and literary and cultural critics by combining literary and cultural criticism with economics and covers a wide range of topics which are of interest to scholars from various disciplines. This volume provides a critical exchange which hopes to enrich both economics and literature. Table of Contents Introduction Nicole BRACKER: Accounting for the Economy of Metaphors and Metaphors of Economy Steven CONNOR: Destitution Part I: Economy — Between Science and Literature Dorothy ROWE: Money, Modernity and Melancholia in the Writings of Georg Simmel Philip TEW: Exploring an Economy of Exegetical Structures through Cassirer and Bourdieu Nadja GERNALZICK: From Classical Dichotomy to Differantial Contract: The Derridean Integration of Monetary Theory Eleanor COURTEMANCHE: Invisible Hands and Visionary Narrators: Why the Free Market is like a Novel Part II: Excessive Economies Gerald POSSELT The Tropological Economy of Catachresis David BENNETT: Desire as Capital: Getting a Return on the Repressed in Libidinal Economy Part III: Narrative Economies Matthew PATEMAN: Lolita — A Region in Flames Joyce GOGGIN: Dire Straits: Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance and the Economic Loss Jessica Maynard: Revolutionist Consumers: The Application of Sacrifice in Ruskin, Bataille and Henry James Cynthia PORT: “Money, for the Night is Coming:” Gendered Economies of Aging in the Novels of Jean Rhys and James Joyce Elio di PIAZZA: The Quest for Values: Traditional Sources in Two Late Nineteenth-Century Novels of Adventure Contributors