§16§§Early Modern Debts: 1550-1700 makes an important contribution to the history of debt and credit in Europe, creating new transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives on problems of debt, credit, trust, interest, and investment in early modern societies. The collection includes essays by leading international scholars and early career researchers in the fields of economic and social history, legal history, literary criticism, and philosophy on such subjects as trust and belief; risk; institutional history; colonialism; personhood; interiority; rhetorical invention; amicable language; ethnicity and credit; household economics; service; and the history of comedy. Across the collection, the book reveals debt's ubiquity in life and literature. It considers debt's function as a tie between the individual and the larger group and the ways in which debts structured the home, urban life, legal systems, and linguistic and literary forms. §§§§ §04§§1. Chapter 1: Introduction - Laura Kolb and George Oppitz-Trotman§§1.1 Debt Connects§§1.2 Economies of Obligation, Then and Now§ §13§"These well-researched essays make a compelling case for the necessity of exploring early modern debt as a multifaceted cultural practice and add to our understanding of the early modern culture of borrowing and lending. Early Modern Debts, 1550-1700 provides a very satisfying introduction into the cultural history of economic and social bonds in early modern Europe, which both an early modernist and a more general reader will come to appreciate." (Anna Kowalcze-Pawlik, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Vol. 174 (259), 2022) §02§§Laura Kolb is Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College CUNY, USA. She is the author of Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare (2021).§§George Oppitz-Trotman is the author of The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy (2019) and Stages of Loss. The English Comedians and their Reception (2020).§§§
