[Editor’s Note: This following article is an adaptation of the introduction to Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor, Edited by Jo Ann Cavallo (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. Paul Cantor was (1945-2022) was a student of Ludwig von Mises and an important contributor to mises.org on topics of the intersection between markets and culture.]
This assortment of essays by specialists in various fields applies libertarian philosophy and free-market financial idea to literature and media. The quantity proceeds largely based on the chronological order of the works into account, transferring from sixteenth-century literary texts and drama to comedian books to up to date cinema and tv collection. A number of chapters deliver to bear the distinction between capitalism and statism, principally specializing in the workings of the market economic system versus central planning however with some consideration additionally dedicated to the theme of freedom versus authorities coercion. Among the extra particular financial ideas used within the analyses—such because the precept of marginal utility, shortage, division of labor and autarky, non-public property, and entrepreneurism—not solely present insights into the financial and political premises embedded in artistic works however may help clear up widespread misconceptions associated to capitalism as effectively.
Because the subtitle suggests, the challenge was impressed by the achievement of Paul A. Cantor (1945–2022), Clifton Waller Barrett Professor on the College of Virginia. One of the adventurous tradition critics of our time, Cantor was edgy and iconoclastic whereas at all times deeply grounded in historic analysis. He achieved a big scholarly and in style following partly as a result of he was all for all the things—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 query whether or not the identical particular person may have authored such a breadth of labor. “Sure,” replies Peter Hufnagel, creator of the web site prof.Cantor, “the Paul A. Cantor who writes about Averroism in Dante’s Divine Comedy is similar Paul A. Cantor who writes about Walter White as a tragic hero in Breaking Unhealthy” (“The Nature of the Web site”). As John Rodden has put it, “Cantor was not simply an eminent scholar of the European Renaissance however a Renaissance man himself within the sphere of arts and letters” (“Paul Cantor: Renaissance Scholar as Renaissance Man”).
But it’s not solely the beautiful vary of Cantor’s pursuits that motivated this quantity, but in addition, and particularly, his pioneering interdisciplinary methodology which introduced libertarian philosophy and sound financial idea to bear on issues of tradition. Working in opposition to the grain, Cantor turned particularly to free-market economics in his evaluation of literature and media. As Alberto Mingardi aptly remarked, such an method made Cantor a “uncommon factor,” that’s, “an mental within the humanities— much more, a literary critic—who had some sympathy for capitalism. At one degree, this sympathy emerged in the actual fact that he was not a snob: collectively along with his Shakespeare research, he cultivated an curiosity in in style tradition that he understood as a residing factor, and typically a fantastic factor too” (“Paul Cantor RIP”).
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The current assortment of essays, like Cantor and Stephen Cox’s seminal quantity Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Tradition (Mises Institute, 2009), applies libertarian criticism throughout totally different genres and media, time durations, and geographical places.
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The primary three chapters might function a mirrored image on and additional growth of the methodology in numerous methods. The opening chapter gives additional perception into Cantor’s interpretations of Shakespeare’s Roman performs with the help of Cantor’s non-public correspondence on the topic (David Gordon). The subsequent chapter makes use of instruments of libertarian evaluation to develop a brand new idea of comedy after which take a look at it in opposition to varied forms of humor, together with some that haven’t match earlier theories (Stephen Cox). The third essay of this group applies an Austrian lens to the “industrial self-fashioning” of an early seventeenth-century public and literary determine referred to as the Roaring Lady, arguing that “capitalism doesn’t constrain however allows the disruption of inflexible frameworks that govern who or what one could be” (Katharine Gillespie).
The next 5 chapters present new readings of canonical English, Russian, Italian, and German literary works from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, particularly, Ben Jonson’s comedy The Alchemist (Peter Hufnagel), Leo Tolstoy’s historic novel Warfare and Peace (Edward P. Stringham and Spencer D. Brown), Carlo Collodi’s youngsters’s e book Pinocchio (Salvatore Taibi), H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Warfare of the Worlds (Michael Valdez Moses), and Hermann Hesse’s non secular novel Siddhartha (Jo Ann Skousen). Every chapter strikes deftly between the literary and historic context of the creator and a detailed studying of the textual content. Whereas all 5 uncover a distinction between collectivist and free-market visions throughout the fictional work itself, two contributors discover this opposition to be a part of the creator’s instructional intention whereas the opposite three contributors see the various representations of capitalism and state energy to be the results of the authors’ ambiguous or contradictory financial notions.
However canonical literature is just half the curiosity—and half the enjoyable—of this e book. In line with Cantor’s deep curiosity within the in style and the vernacular, contributors provide a lot that’s new about non-literary genres. The chapter analyzing the evolution of Scrooge McDuck (Alberto Mingardi) might function a bridge between the earlier 5 essays centered on single- authored classics of early trendy and trendy literature to the amount’s subsequent chapters dedicated to in style movie and tv. Tracing the event of this fictional character—one among Cantor’s favorites—throughout comedian e book and TV cartoon collection from the late Forties to the early Nineteen Nineties, this chapter brings to gentle totally different attitudes towards enterprise in American society.
The ultimate 4 chapters deliver a libertarian perspective to the examine of movie and tv in the US. The chapter on 4 movies by totally different administrators centered on the 2007–2009 monetary disaster each analyzes the methods used throughout the movies to characterize the disaster and assesses the accuracy and completeness of the narratives, significantly as regards to the governmental actions and insurance policies that led to the issue (Stefano Adamo). The subsequent two chapters discover tv reveals that take us to the fictional frontier of outer area and the American Far West, respectively. The chapter on science fiction TV collection reveals methods during which among the hottest reveals from the Nineteen Seventies to the 2020s dramatize core financial points and ideas (Matthew McCaffrey and Carmen-Elena Dorobat). The chapter on “the Yellowstone universe,” specifically the prequels 1883 and 1923, analyzes current TV Westerns alongside the traces established by Cantor and McMaken of their scholarship on the American Western style (Matt Spivey).
The concluding chapter of this part and of the amount as a complete, written by Paul A. Cantor himself, scrutinizes the remedy of capitalism within the actuality present Undercover Boss. This world tv collection, which originated in England in 2009 and has continued to the current there, has been each independently produced and rebroadcast in a number of international locations. Cantor units the U.S. model of Undercover Boss in opposition to one other actuality tv collection that includes the enterprise world, Shark Tank, which premiered in the US in 2009 and follows the format of a Japanese actuality present originating in 2001.
In sum, Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism goals to contribute to the scholarly dialog on this burgeoning discipline by bringing collectively a few of its latest in addition to a few of its most outstanding voices. The quantity not solely builds upon Cantor’s groundbreaking work however presents a variety of instructions for libertarian literary and media scholarship sooner or later. The essays on this assortment must be of curiosity to each humanists and social scientists working throughout disciplines, traditions, languages, and eras. It is usually designed to seize the eye of normal readers outdoors the academy. Evaluation of the humanities, in any case, is an important a part of “praxeology,” the time period coined by Mises to point the evaluation of all human motion. What one learns from the examine of Shakespeare—or Scrooge McDuck—can present genuine insights into the workings of the world we inhabit.