Objective Observers – Curious Commodities

The long 18th century sees a particular heyday of tales in which objects tell their stories. It-Narratives, as scholars now call these texts, become a separate literary genre. This book explores the rise and fall of this genre, by situating it in the rise of experimental science, the development of political economy and the popularization of representative money. By approaching these processes through the lens of it-narratives, this book challenges received ideas about their historical moment, while also showing how it-narratives stand at the center of the theory of literary estrangement. Making the familiar strange itself, it shows the heroes of the picaresque as objects, Robert Boyle as a businessman, Daniel Defoe as a writer on the psychoanalytic drive, Jonathan Swift as a disgruntled drapier, Adam Smith as a literary critic, and Newton as the Master of the Mint. In this, the book offers a defamiliarizing perspective that challenges relationships we take for granted in the long 18th century.