Suspect Paper: Money in Romanticism

This chapter explores the diverse accounts of money in European Romanticism. While there was broad consensus among the philosophers and poets of the period that money possessed unusual powers, there was considerable disagreement about what those powers were and whether they were to be celebrated or deplored. Some authors were clearly disturbed by the advent of new forms of currency, whereas others applauded efforts to undermine traditional standards of financial value. Ultimately, however, even writers who resisted the notion that money’s legitimacy could be solely a factor of governmental fiat had to acknowledge the shakiness of the opposition between genuine and imaginary wealth. After elucidating the parameters of these debates, the chapter turns to a consideration of the relationship between language and money in J. W. von Goethe’s Faust and the writings of Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) and Friedrich Schlegel. A final section looks at Baudelaire’s prose poem “Counterfeit Money,” reading it as a late Romantic reflection on the idea that currency has an irreducibly fictitious dimension.