신경제비평의 관점에서 본 『스테이플 신문사』: 근대 초기 자본주의화의 과정에서 빚어진 언어의 오물과 자본의 타락

Abstract

The Staple of News unfolds through two interconnected plots: an allegorical narrative centered on Pecunia, and a realistic storyline focused on Cymbal’s news agency. These dual narratives have driven two distinct strands of previous studies. First, some critics explore the moral lessons of the allegorical plot, suggesting that the play advocates the ‘golden mean’ by juxtaposing the profligate Pennyboy Junior with the miserly Pennyboy Senior. Second, other critics examine the historical context of Cymbal’s news business, linking it to the early modern development of entrepreneurial industries. Despite the relative virtues provided by these studies, they overlook the interplay between Pecunia’s monetary symbolism and Cymbal’s linguistic fantasies. This essay aims to address this gap by analyzing the symbiotic relationships between Cymbal’s dissemination of debased languages and the corruptive influence of Pennyboy Junior’s wealth. As an analytic framework to achieve this aim, this study employs new economic criticism, which draws on isomorphic relations between Karl Marx’s theory of capital development and Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive semiology.