Literature and Inequality: Nine Perspectives from the Napoleonic Era through the First Gilded Age

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Description

The consequences of high-end inequality seep into almost every aspect of human life: it is not just a question for economists.

In this highly accessible new work, Professor Shaviro takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore how great works of literature have provided some of the most incisive accounts of inequality and its social and cultural ramifications over the last two centuries. Through perceptive close readings of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Edith Wharton, among others, he not only demonstrates how these accounts are still relevant today, but how they can illuminate our understanding of our current situation and broaden our own perspective beyond the merely economic.

Reviews

Literature and Inequality is an eye-opening and powerfully affecting book. By rereading literary classics through the lens of high-end inequality, and by emphasizing their fascination with the contest between patrimonial complacency and meritocratic ambition, Shaviro opens a new window into familiar texts. And by confronting us with the lessons of his readings, Shaviro compels a new reckoning with the rising high-end inequality and regenerated caste system that increasingly plague our own age. Daniel Markovits, Guido Calabresi Professor of Law, Yale Law School, USA, and Author of The Meritocracy Trap

Shaviro has successfully made a case for the study of creative literature by economists and tax specialists, who can now look at the history of literature as a history of their own. Robert Appelbaum, British Tax Review (2021)

Author Bio

Daniel Shaviro is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School, where his research focuses on tax policy and distributive justice. He is also the author of the satirical novel Getting It.