Speculative Economic Ideology and Dramatic Strategies in Susanna Centlivre's the Basset Table and the Busy Body

The importance of the trading classes and their philosophies in eighteenth-century literature grew as financial insitutions like the Bank of England and the National Debt were established; specifically, J.G.A. Pocock tells us, because of the audiences' and writers' "conscious recognition of change in the economic and social foundations of politics and the political personality." As the social consciousness of the English commonality became indefinite, plebeian writers, like the early eighteenth-century dramatist Susanna Centlivre, rushed to characterize the virtuous English citizen according to speculative economic tenets in an effort to supersede the traditional aristocratic, landed ones. By utilizing strategies associated with the speculative economy--such as gambling, intrigue, formal education, and marriage--that "structurally and metaphorically replicate the process of deferral, continuation, and imaginative participation," Centlivre is able to situate, in her dramas The Basset Table and The Busy Body, traditionally disenfranchised characters, especially women, in socially elevated positions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts in English

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2003

Author dc:creator

• Hicks, Heather

Contributors dc:contributor

• William Burling

• English Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• © Heather Hicks

Repository record dc:identifier

https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/723

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:bearworks.missouristate.edu:theses-1724