Forms of Exchange and Structures of the Novel: Austen and Scott in World History

Yoon Sun Lee • Wellesley College

November 10th @ 5pm • Room 100 of The Frank Center for Public Affairs

The canonical realist novel was shaped at the time when Britain began to emerge as “the sole winner in the first half of the nineteenth century,” in Kojin Karatani’s words. In a sort of double birth, Austen’s novels focused on courtship, marriage, and family relationships in clearly-defined local settings, while Scott’s historical novels traced the long transition from feudalism to capitalism in temporal or spatial border zones marked by conflict. This paper explores how Karatani’s model of world history can help us understand the hegemony that the realist novel achieved. Karatani identifies modes of exchange rather than production as key to the survival of the nation-state-capitalism complex. Through these modes—reciprocity, domination, and commodity exchange—we can better understand the complex interplay of value, action, and form in the novels of both Austen and Scott, as well as their development of techniques of narration.

Genres of Proof
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