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- Title
Going off the Gold Standard in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.
- Authors
Humphries, David T.
- Abstract
Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (1934) provides a unique modernist representation of the economic warfare of the Great Depression, as evident in Miller’s claims for ‘‘going off the gold standard.’’ This essay explores what such claims reveal about the connections between economic regimes and the symbolic structures which underpin both cultural production and the experience of everyday life. In his depiction of prostitution and embodied transactions, Miller offers alternate modes of circulation and currency, which challenge existing economic structures and literary genres and the ways they regulate and reify conventional values. In his attempts to create a language and form that ‘‘flow,’’ Miller reveals how nationalism, economic strictures, and literary conventions promote hoarding, create conflicts, and mask the experience of everyday life. Miller presents individual performances and exuberant excess as an antidote to harsh economic policies in a way that speaks to today’s debates about ‘‘hard currency’’ and the need for austerity economics.
- Subjects
TROPIC of Cancer (Book : Miller); MILLER, Henry, 1891-1980; MODERNISM (Literature); GOLD standard; SEX work in literature; MONEY in literature; ECONOMICS &; literature; HISTORY of Paris, France; MODERNISM (Literary period)
- Publication
Canadian Review of American Studies, 2017, Vol 47, Issue 2, p239
- ISSN
0007-7720
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.3138/cras.2016.017