문학과 경제 그리고 학제적 교육:

Literature, Economics and Interdisciplinary Education: Teaching the Utility of Literature in Wordsworth and Keats’s Poetry

Literature teachers in Korean universities nowadays are pressured to educate literature through a new kind of paradigm. Interdisciplinary education lies at the heart of pedagogic shift. This essay explores the economy of literature so as to bring the advantages of cross-disciplinary teaching to the fore. In order to specify my argument, I first focus on the interplay of Romantic literature and economics. I discuss moral economy in Wordsworth’s poetry and the economy of aesthetics in Keats’s poetry. Then, I compare John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty with Peter Thiel’s Zero to One in order to help students improve their abilities to apply their understanding of the economy of literature in the context of current socio-economic phenomena. Wordsworth and Keats’s poems provide good examples for teaching the utility of literature to undergraduate English majors. In “The Old Cumberland Beggar,” Wordsworth blames contemporary political economists for eliminating moral considerations in their economic policies. While he stresses the social usefulness of charity in the poem by arguing that the existence of the Cumberland beggar reinforces social bonds in a local community, we need to note that Wordsworth gives particular attention to the beggar’s neighbors who take advantage of their charity towards him merely to improve their own moral qualities. Accordingly, we see what Max Weber describes as “the elective affinity” between Wordsworth’s view of morals and laissez-faire capitalism. The egoistic turn of charity thus conspires with capitalism in pursuit of private interests that Wordsworth condemns. Keats’s work focuses on the economy of aesthetics. “Ode on Indolence” celebrates laziness pitted against productive labor. Here Keats seeks out what he calls “diligent indolence.” This oxymoronic phrase implies that Keats capitalizes on aesthetic activities opposed to physical labor. In other words, he desires aesthetic capital. In “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” Keats precisely expresses his desire for this new kind of capital. He is aware that George Chapman’s translation of Homer’s works into English is more inspiring than Alexander Pope’s. Keats is fascinated by Chapman’s touching paraphrases and recognizes the value of language. He sees wording and phrasing themselves as desirable objects for his own poetic property. As shown in Wordsworth and Keats’s poems, Romantic writers thematize moral or aesthetic capital as distinct from material capital. Through interdisciplinary education, an English literature instructor can encourage his or her students to develop a cross-disciplinary way of thinking. Comparing Mill’s valuation of individuality with Thiel’s argument for the differentiation of goods helps students to utilize their knowledge about the economy of Romantic literature in current times. Becoming accustomed to such study will help students apply interdisciplinary thoughts to contemporary social issues as well as literary texts.