[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 concept to literature and media. The quantity proceeds largely in keeping with the chronological order of the works into consideration, 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, largely 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 inventive works however will help clear up widespread misconceptions associated to capitalism as properly.
Because the subtitle suggests, the mission 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 well-liked following partly as a result of he was concerned with every part—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 identical 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 isn’t solely the beautiful vary of Cantor’s pursuits that motivated this quantity, but additionally, and particularly, his pioneering interdisciplinary methodology which introduced libertarian philosophy and sound financial concept to bear on issues of tradition. Working towards the grain, Cantor turned particularly to free-market economics in his evaluation of literature and media. As Alberto Mingardi aptly remarked, such an strategy 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 well-liked tradition that he understood as a dwelling factor, and generally an exquisite 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 areas.
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The primary three chapters could function a mirrored image on and additional improvement of the methodology in numerous methods. The opening chapter supplies 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 following chapter makes use of instruments of libertarian evaluation to develop a brand new concept of comedy after which take a look at it towards varied kinds 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 Woman, arguing that “capitalism doesn’t constrain however permits the disruption of inflexible frameworks that govern who or what one may 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 Struggle and Peace (Edward P. Stringham and Spencer D. Brown), Carlo Collodi’s kids’s e-book Pinocchio (Salvatore Taibi), H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Struggle of the Worlds (Michael Valdez Moses), and Hermann Hesse’s religious novel Siddhartha (Jo Ann Skousen). Every chapter strikes deftly between the literary and historic context of the writer and an in depth 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 writer’s academic intention whereas the opposite three contributors see the numerous 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 step with Cantor’s deep curiosity within the well-liked and the vernacular, contributors provide a lot that’s new about non-literary genres. The chapter analyzing the evolution of Scrooge McDuck (Alberto Mingardi) could function a bridge between the earlier 5 essays targeted on single- authored classics of early trendy and trendy literature to the quantity’s subsequent chapters dedicated to well-liked movie and tv. Tracing the event of this fictional character—considered one of Cantor’s favorites—throughout comedian e-book and TV cartoon collection from the late Forties to the early Nineties, this chapter brings to gentle totally different attitudes towards enterprise in American society.
The ultimate 4 chapters deliver a libertarian perspective to the research 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 strategies used throughout the movies to signify the disaster and assesses the accuracy and completeness of the narratives, notably close to the governmental actions and insurance policies that led to the issue (Stefano Adamo). The following two chapters discover tv reveals that take us to the fictional frontier of outer house and the American Far West, respectively. The chapter on science fiction TV collection reveals methods by which a few of the hottest reveals from the Seventies to the 2020s dramatize core financial points and ideas (Matthew McCaffrey and Carmen-Elena Dorobat). The chapter on “the Yellowstone universe,” particularly the prequels 1883 and 1923, analyzes latest 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 quantity as an entire, written by Paul A. Cantor himself, scrutinizes the therapy 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 nations. Cantor units the U.S. model of Undercover Boss towards 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 distinguished 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. Additionally it is designed to seize the eye of normal readers outdoors the academy. Evaluation of the humanities, in spite of everything, is a crucial a part of “praxeology,” the time period coined by Mises to point the evaluation of all human motion. What one learns from the research of Shakespeare—or Scrooge McDuck—can present genuine insights into the workings of the world we inhabit.
