Sick Economies: Drama, Mercantilism, and Disease in Shakespeare's England

by Jonathan Gil Harris

Book Overview

From French Physiocrat theories of the blood-like circulation of wealth to Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the market, the body has played a crucial role in Western perceptions of the economic. In Renaissance culture, however, the dominant bodily metaphors for national wealth and economy were derived from the relatively new language of infectious disease. Whereas traditional Galenic medicine had understood illness as a state of imbalance within...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812237730
• ISBN13: 9780812237733
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.1"