Jonson's Joyless Economy: Theorizing Motivation and Pleasure in Volpone

Abstract

AbstractDeparting from a tradition of expedient, often pious, interpretations of Volpone as a straightforward fable of avarice, miserliness, and material misappropriation, this essay takes a fresh look at old Volp's actions in the light of radical reconsiderations of consumer motivation by the contemporary economist, Tibor Scitovsky. Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy broke with conventional economic doxa by asking whether modern consumer behavior was in fact irrational, and, further, whether Americans are encouraged to pursue styles of life that foster ennui. Applying the Scitovskian paradigm to another commodity culture, Volpone's seventeenth‐century Venice, forces us to confront an aspect of the play most usually finessed: the joy of gulling. Volpone, and early modern city comedy more generally, offers us a chance to examine the multi‐faceted response of individuals in the early Seventeenth Century coming to terms with Europe's expanding commercial scene and the commodity culture to which the playhouse re...