Fakirlik, Dickens’ın Oliver Twist Adlı Eseri ve J. R. McCulloch

İktisat biliminin öncüsü olan politik ekonomi, romancıları da meşgul eden fakirlik ve varlık gibi kavramlarla ilgilendi. Yirminci yüzyılın sonunda ve yirmibirinci yüzyılın başında, edebiyat eleştiri, edebiyat ve politik ekonomi söylemlerinin, Romantik akımın aralarındaki bağlantıyı reddetmesine rağmen nasıl kesiştiğini gösterir. Bu süregelen akademik çabaya katkıda bulunmayı amaçlayan bu makale, Charles Dickens’ın 1834 Yeni Fakir Kanunu altında fakirlerin çektiği zorlukları ele alan Oliver Twist adlı eseri ile, politik ekonomi yazarı J R McCulloch’nun aynı kanun hakkındaki yazıları arasında şaşırtıcı bir benzeşme yakalar. Her ikisi de teorik bilgiye güvenmezler ve bir karar verirken dikkate alınması gereken kriter olarak tekillikleri ön plana çıkarırlar. Bu benzeşme şaşırtıcıdır, çünkü Oliver Twist politik ekonomiyi benimsemez. McCulloch’nın ve Dickens’ın ortak bilgi kuramını farketmek, tekilliklerin sistemsel olana üstünlüğünün Oliver Twist’i nasıl şekillendirdiğini görmemizi sağlar. Oliver Twist ve McCulloch’nun Yeni Fakir Kanunu üzerine yazılarının ortak noktaları, edebiyat ve politik ekonomi söylemlerinin birbirine ne kadar bağlantılı olduğuna işaret eder.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens, Yeni Fakir Kanunu, politik ekonomi, J. R. McCulloch

Poverty, Dickens’s Oliver Twist, and J. R. McCulloch

As the precursor to the science of economics, political economy concerned some topics that also preoccupied novelists, such as poverty and wealth. Literary criticism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been charting the ways in which the discourses of literature and political economy intersect, despite the Romantic disavowal of their commonalities. Aiming to contribute to this ongoing scholarly effort, this essay pinpoints an unexpected affinity between Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, a novel which addresses the plight of the poor under the New Poor Law of 1834, and the political economist J. R. McCulloch’s writing on that piece of legislation. Both mistrust theoretical knowledge and privilege the particular as the basis on which one must make decisions. This affinity is unexpected because Oliver Twist repudiates political economy. Recognizing McCulloch’s and Dickens’s common epistemology alerts us to the ways in which the preference for the particular over the systemic shapes Oliver Twist. The common ground between Oliver Twist and McCulloch’s writing on the New Poor Law attests to the interconnectedness of literature and political economy.

Keywords:

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens, New Poor Law, political economy, J. R. McCulloch,

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