ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the varied critical methods that literary critics employed over the past 40 years as they explored the relationship between money, finance, political economy, and Victorian literature. It traces the enduring influence of poststructuralist theory on economic criticism, particularly as it relates to the continuities scholars posit between fictionality, money, finance, and the novel. The chapter also examines the shared disciplinary histories of political economy and aesthetics, which has been a crucial feature of interdisciplinary arguments on Victorian literature and economics. Turning to more recent theoretical trends, the chapter indicates the importance of further excavating the role affects/emotions play in economics and the way in which both the Victorian novel and political economy need to be situated within a global network.
