ABSTRACT
Owing to their enduring association with sensory indulgence, moral corruption and national decline, luxury and gluttony have long been the target of literary critique, as the previous chapters in this book have demonstrated. However, with the advance of what has been called the eighteenth-century ‘consumer revolution’ (McKendrick et al. 1983, 1), debates about the social, ethical and economic implications of excessive eating and luxurious living took on a new intensity. For some, conspicuous consumption retained the negative valence traditionally assigned to it in classical and Christian thought – a negativity that predominated in the medieval and early modern periods discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. Others, such as the eighteenth-century political economists Adam Smith and David Hume, reconceived luxury as a socially beneficial force – one that enhanced national prosperity by ‘nourish[ing] commerce and industry’ (Hume 1752, 35).
