Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Problems of Definition: The Meaning of Spenser's "Wastfull Luxuree"; 2 Cleopatra's Spoils: Proto-Liberal Dimensions of Early Modern Luxury; 3 Sin City: Satirizing Luxury in Early Modern London; 4 Riotous Luxury: Comical Satire and the Staging of a New Order of Things; 5 Bad Markets: Remoralized Luxury in Mercantile Literature; 6 Particularizing Abundance: Un-Economic Luxury in Roman Political Tragedy; Bibliography; Index
Exploring the idea of luxury in relation to a series of neighbouring but distinct concepts including avarice, licentiousness, indulgence, vitality, abundance and waste, this study combines intellectual and cultural historical methods to trace discontinuities in the conceptual development of extravagance in seventeenth-century England. Scott traces how 'luxury' developed encompassing meanings that connect with eighteenth-century debates even as they oppose their so-called demoralizing thrust
