This collection of essays by experts in diverse fields applies libertarian philosophy and free-market economic theory to literature and media. The volume proceeds largely according to the chronological order of the works under consideration, moving from sixteenth-century literary texts and drama to comic books to contemporary cinema and television series. Several chapters bring to bear the contrast between capitalism and statism, mostly focusing on the workings of the market economy versus central planning but with some attention also devoted to the theme of freedom versus government coercion. Some of the more specific economic concepts used in the analyses—such as the principle of marginal utility, scarcity, division of labor and autarky, private property, and entrepreneurism—not only provide insights into the economic and political premises embedded in creative works but can help clear up common misconceptions related to capitalism as well.
As the subtitle suggests, the project was inspired by the achievement of Paul A. Cantor (1945–2022), Clifton Waller Barrett Professor at the University of Virginia. One of the most adventurous culture critics of our time, Cantor was edgy and iconoclastic while always deeply grounded in historical research. He achieved a large scholarly and popular following in part because he was interested in everything—from Shakespeare to South Park, from H. G. Wells to Gilligan’s Island. His scholarship was so prolific and all-embracing that it led some to question whether the same person could have authored such a breadth of work. “Yes,” replies Peter Hufnagel, creator of the website prof.Cantor, “the Paul A. Cantor who writes about Averroism in Dante’s Divine Comedy is the same Paul A. Cantor who writes about Walter White as a tragic hero in Breaking Bad” (“The Nature of the Website”). As John Rodden has put it, “Cantor was not just an eminent scholar of the European Renaissance but a Renaissance man himself in the sphere of arts and letters” (“Paul Cantor: Renaissance Scholar as Renaissance Man”).
Yet it is not only the stunning range of Cantor’s interests that motivated this volume, but also, and especially, his pioneering interdisciplinary methodology which brought libertarian philosophy and sound economic theory to bear on matters of culture. Working against the grain, Cantor turned specifically to free-market economics in his analysis of literature and media. As Alberto Mingardi aptly remarked, such an approach made Cantor a “rare thing,” that is, “an intellectual in the humanities— even more, a literary critic—who had some sympathy for capitalism. At one level, this sympathy emerged in the very fact that he was not a snob: together with his Shakespeare studies, he cultivated an interest in popular culture that he understood as a living thing, and sometimes a beautiful thing too” (“Paul Cantor RIP”).
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The present collection of essays, like Cantor and Stephen Cox’s seminal volume Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture (Mises Institute, 2009), applies libertarian criticism across different genres and media, time periods, and geographical locations.
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The first three chapters may serve as a reflection on and further development of the methodology in different ways. The opening chapter provides further insight into Cantor’s interpretations of Shakespeare’s Roman plays with the assistance of Cantor’s private correspondence on the subject (David Gordon). The next chapter uses tools of libertarian analysis to develop a new theory of comedy and then test it against various types of humor, including some that have not fit previous theories (Stephen Cox). The third essay of this group applies an Austrian lens to the “commercial self-fashioning” of an early seventeenth-century public and literary figure known as the Roaring Girl, arguing that “capitalism does not constrain but enables the disruption of rigid frameworks that govern who or what one can be” (Katharine Gillespie).
The following five chapters provide new readings of canonical English, Russian, Italian, and German literary works from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, namely, Ben Jonson’s comedy The Alchemist (Peter Hufnagel), Leo Tolstoy’s historical novel War and Peace (Edward P. Stringham and Spencer D. Brown), Carlo Collodi’s children’s book Pinocchio (Salvatore Taibi), H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel The War of the Worlds (Michael Valdez Moses), and Hermann Hesse’s spiritual novel Siddhartha (Jo Ann Skousen). Each chapter moves deftly between the literary and historical context of the author and a close reading of the text. While all five uncover a contrast between collectivist and free-market visions within the fictional work itself, two contributors find this opposition to be part of the author’s educational intention while the other three contributors see the varied representations of capitalism and state power to be the result of the authors’ ambiguous or contradictory economic notions.
But canonical literature is only half the interest—and half the fun—of this book. In keeping with Cantor’s deep interest in the popular and the vernacular, contributors offer much that is new about non-literary genres. The chapter analyzing the evolution of Scrooge McDuck (Alberto Mingardi) may serve as a bridge between the previous five essays focused on single- authored classics of early modern and modern literature to the volume’s subsequent chapters devoted to popular film and television. Tracing the development of this fictional character—one of Cantor’s favorites—across comic book and TV cartoon series from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, this chapter brings to light different attitudes toward business in American society.
The final four chapters bring a libertarian perspective to the study of film and television in the United States. The chapter on four films by different directors centered on the 2007–2009 financial crisis both analyzes the techniques used within the films to represent the crisis and assesses the accuracy and completeness of the narratives, particularly with regards to the governmental actions and policies that led to the problem (Stefano Adamo). The next two chapters explore television shows that take us to the fictional frontier of outer space and the American Far West, respectively. The chapter on science fiction TV series reveals ways in which some of the most popular shows from the 1970s to the 2020s dramatize core economic issues and concepts (Matthew McCaffrey and Carmen-Elena Dorobat). The chapter on “the Yellowstone universe,” in particular the prequels 1883 and 1923, analyzes recent TV Westerns along the lines established by Cantor and McMaken in their scholarship on the American Western genre (Matt Spivey).
The concluding chapter of this section and of the volume as a whole, written by Paul A. Cantor himself, scrutinizes the treatment of capitalism in the reality show Undercover Boss. This global television series, which originated in England in 2009 and has continued to the present there, has been both independently produced and rebroadcast in several countries. Cantor sets the U.S. version of Undercover Boss against another reality television series featuring the business world, Shark Tank, which premiered in the United States in 2009 and follows the format of a Japanese reality show originating in 2001.
In sum, Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism aims to contribute to the scholarly conversation in this burgeoning field by bringing together some of its newest as well as some of its most prominent voices. The volume not only builds upon Cantor’s groundbreaking work but offers a range of directions for libertarian literary and media scholarship in the future. The essays in this collection should be of interest to both humanists and social scientists working across disciplines, traditions, languages, and eras. It is also designed to capture the attention of general readers outside the academy. Analysis of the arts, after all, is a vital part of “praxeology,” the term coined by Mises to indicate the analysis of all human action. What one learns from the study of Shakespeare—or Scrooge McDuck—can provide authentic insights into the workings of the world we inhabit.
[The above paragraphs are excerpted from the volume’s introduction.]
