Prologue (Thomas Apolte)

Introduction: European Enlightenment as the Era of Both Male and Female Protagonists of Production (1700–1800) (Beatrice Schuchardt and Christian von Tschilschke)

Section 1: Historical and Theoretical Groundings

• From otium to nec-otium: Vile Trades, Dishonorable Entrepreneurs. The Case of Spain (Joaquín Ocampo Suárez-Valdés and Patricia Suárez Cano)
• Poverty Between Dignity and Criminalization in Early-Modern France and Spain: Attempts to Include and Exclude the Poor (Manfred Tietz)
• The Nation as Economic Agent in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Apologetic Texts (Andreas Gelz)

Section 2: Male Protagonists of Trade and Industry: Of Businessmen and Entrepreneurs

• The Dictionnaire universel de commerce (1723) and Savary’s Mercantilism in the Writings of Carl Günther Ludovici (Christoph Strosetzki)
• Doing Business in the Spanish Antiguo Régimen: The Case of Juan de Goyeneche y Gastón: Between Profit, Heroism and Political Commitment (Jan-Henrik Witthaus)
• Business and Businessmen in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Drama (María Jesús García Garrosa)
• Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Rousseau’s Emile, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe: The Embarrassment of Choosing a Profession (Claire Pignol)
• Between State-Managed Reforms and Private Utopia: The Entrepreneurial Projects of Pablo de Olavide (Christian von Tschilschke)

Section 3: Female Protagonists of Production

• Two Women, Two Ways: Economy and Theater in Enlightenment Spain (David T. Gies)
• Maja’s Labors Lost in Ramón de la Cruz’s sainetes (Ana Hontanilla)
• Work It, Baby! Economics and Emotions on the Marriage Market in Goldoni’s La Locandiera and Trilogia della villeggiatura (Esther Schomacher)

Section 4: Economic Protagonists of Both Sexes

• Staging Spanish Political Economy as Figural Types: From Civilian Heroes to Male and Female Protagonists of Production (Beatrice Schuchardt)
• “Spectatorial” Entrepreneurs in the Moral Essays of the 18th Century (Klaus-Dieter Ertler)

Section 5: Robinsonades

• Robinson Crusoe’s Economy (Nils Goldschmidt and Hermann Rauchenschwandtner)
• The Literary Genealogy of the Working Man: From Early Modern Castaways and Settlers to Robinson Crusoe (Urs Urban)
• Defoe, Economically Constructed Property, and Reputational Credit (Natalie Roxburgh)

Section 6: Protagonists of Agriculture and the Influence of Physiocracy

• Nature as a Protagonist of Production in Jovellanos’s Informe de Ley Agraria and Diario – A “Measurement of the Sublime” (Susanne Schlünder)
• Pastoral Economies. Natural vs. Human Productivity in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (Annika Nickenig)
• An Idealistic, but Failing Protagonist of Production: Claude-François-Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia and His Physiocratic Project in the New World (Anna Isabell Wörsdörfer)

Epilogue: The Literary Liberalism of the Bourgeoise (Deirdre Nansen McCloskey)

Notes on Contributors