Borgerlig protestantisk etikk versus spekulativ jødisk kapitalisme hos Alexander L. Kielland

Abstract

Bourgeois Protestant ethics and Jewish speculative capitalism in Alexander L. Kielland The hypothesis of this article is that Alexander L. Kielland’s novels participate in a wide economic discourse of the 19th century, which negotiated between a bourgeois Protestant ethic and a speculative mode of economic praxis. In the 19th century this capitalistic mode was often connected to the Jews, and I will argue that Kielland in his last novel Jacob (1891) uses the same motives which often were used in connection with the «economic Jew» to describe his protagonist Tørres Snørtevold.