SOURCE: "Phynances," in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, Fall, 1988, pp. 208-15.

In the following essay, Issacharoff identifies some recurring themes involving money, including sexual exchange, inheritance, deception, humor, and the idea that money is usually not earned but rather either bequeathed, received unexpectedly, or obtained by deception

Money, as Harry Levin put it recently,¹ if not the root of all evil, has been the whetstone of wit. My title, "phynances," is of course designed to suggest just that. But despite the reference to Ubu, my paper is not on Jarry, nor is it even in French. After all, one of the weapons of wit is surprise—what pleasure would there be in any literary text or for that matter in any literary enterprise without an element of the unexpected?

Though I would not make any claims to being a thematicist or thematologist, if the concept of theme still...