Frederick Douglass writes of his experience working as a slave in Baltimore:

I was now getting…one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,--not because he had any hand in earning it,--not because I owed it to him,--nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.

Douglass makes several assumptions here, and we may wonder: Why does Douglass get the notion that he earned the money? That he is "owed" it? That Master Hugh's taking money from him is an act of piracy? The answer is that Douglass has learned the language of the American market. He has even learned to believe in the American market. So Douglass’s Narrative is about his desire to be free to join the free market and to earn money for himself just as it is about his desire to escape the illogical, inhumane, and hypocritical system of slavery.

But what is the process through which people come to believe in American business and to repeat the language of this enterprise? Also, what role does literature such as Douglass's anti-slavery narrative play in re-enforcing that belief? These are the questions we will work at answering in this class.

This course will investigate novels, plays, and poems that prominently feature business, businesspeople, and commerce (or interactions in the marketplace). In general, all of these texts depict two worlds—the world of business and the social world—though it's not always clear what the two worlds share. Asking what the connection is between the commercial and the social will help us answer the above questions, and it will also help us see what links literature and business.