This paper explores the various ways in which nineteenth century monetary
theory and the novel addressed the questions of reality and fiction with regard
to the ontological status and social function of money. Departing from Walter
Bagehot’s insistence on the reality and realism of finance, and surveying examples
of how novels by Dickens, Balzac, Trollope, or Zola represented, or avoided representing,
financial realities, I deal with the various notions of money seen either as
a neutral or abstract medium facilitating wealth-creating commodity exchange or as
an active but mystical agent blurring the division of fiction and fact (Mill, Marx,
Simmel). After that the paper gives an overview of economic oriented literary
criticism with regard to its investment in relating and/or distinguishing monetary
and literary notions of fiction. The essay ends by returning to Bagehot’s argument
and raises the question of the appropriation of reality by an increasingly fictitious
finance, problematizing the distinction between expedient fictions and deceitful lies.

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• On monetary and literary fictions