Abstract
Until the 20th century, it seemed impossible to think about the relationship between art and money, the literati being those who refuse to alienate their pens. For a long time, the arts and letters constituted a world apart, opposed to economics, even though there are " economic fictions ", i.e. prediction models that are similar to literary fictions. Among the " economic fictions ", the metaphor of the bee and the hive has been recontextualized over the centuries, sometimes to signify the selfish interest at the basis of collective fulfillment, sometimes to model cognitive capitalism. It is precisely because the former have real effects that economics is in an adversarial relationship with literature.
Theater is the genre best suited to subverting economic mechanisms. Thus, in the 17th-18th centuries, the characters of the widow and the youngest son enabled us to explore the margins of society and to deploy " jeu ". What's more, we all too often forget that classical theater has a fourth unit, that of interest (which must be aroused in the spectator), which implies a reflection on the economy of attention. This preoccupation with attention anticipated the most modern forms of economics, which is so fond of literary metaphors and uses them performatively.
