Cosmopolis and Beyond: Literary Cosmopolitanism after the Republic of Letters
29 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 8 years ago -Cosmopolitanism, derived from the ancient Greek for ‘world citizenship’, offers a radical alternative to nationalism, asking individuals to imagine themselves as part of a community that goes beyond national and linguistic boundaries. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in cosmopolitanism in the humanities and social sciences, especially within philosophy, sociology and politics. Cosmopolitanism, however, has also exercised a shaping influence on modern literary culture. It is well known that during the Enlightenment it found an embodiment in the Republic of Letters. Its evolution thereafter included uneasy alliances with the idea of Empire in the nineteenth century, and with the experiments of the international avant gardes and modernist circles, and the phenomenon of globalisation in the twentieth. Through these, and more, cultural formations cosmopolitanism has given rise to new ways of writing, reading, translating and circulating texts; these processes have, in turn, led to new understandings of individual and national identity, new forms of ethics and new configurations of aesthetic and political engagement. From Kant to Derrida, cosmopolitanism has in the course of history been seen as fostering peace and communication across borders. Far from being uncontroversial, though, it has also been attacked by those who have denounced its universalism as impossible and its social ethos as elitist.
The papers gathered here were delivered at the conference Cosmopolis and Beyond, which was held at Trinity College, Oxford, in March 2016. The keynote addresses were given by Emily Apter (NYU) and Gisèle Sapiro (EHESS). The individual papers explore different literary manifestations of the cosmopolitan ideal, broadly conceived, and its influence on modern literary culture. They tease out elements of continuity and rupture in a long history of literary cosmopolitanism that goes from the decline of the Republic of Letters to the era of globalisation.
The conference was part of the AHRC-funded research project 'The Love of Strangers: Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle', led by Stefano Evangelista.
It was organised by Stefano Evangelista (conference organiser) and Clément Dessy (conference assistant).
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Episodes
Conference Introduction
April 22, 2016 13:30 - 8 minutes - 7.34 MBStefano Evangelista introduces the Cosmopolis & Beyond conference.
“Guide to a Disturbed Planet”: Modernist travel and the Cosmopolitics of Hospitality in Rebecca West
April 06, 2016 15:55 - 21 minutes - 19.3 MBAnnabel Williams explores the notion of hospitality in British modernist travel literature through the work of Rebecca West. This paper explores the notion of hospitality in British modernist travel literature, and argues for its significance to the period in initiating a cosmopolitics that paradoxically both challenges and capitulates to nationalist thinking, and to the privileged status that comes with a universalist cosmopolitan perspective. It uses the work of Rebecca West to demonstrate ...
Cosmopolitan Bodies and choral Anxieties in early twentieth-century Performances of Greek Drama
April 06, 2016 15:52 - 25 minutes - 23.7 MBFiona Macintosh examines the anxieties in pre-WW1 Britain surrounding social and theatrical, and especially Greek-inspired, dance, which becomes increasingly associated with moral decadence and dangerous 'cosmopolitanism'. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of drama was no longer deemed to reside exclusively in the word but in a ‘rhythm’ that encompassed word, body, set and score. With this new fascination with the moving body in performance spaces came a widespread intere...
Queer Cosmopolitanism in the Expatriate Literature of Berlin
April 06, 2016 15:48 - 21 minutes - 19.7 MBBen Robbins considers queer cosmopolitanism in the work of Anglophone writers who lived in Berlin during the era of the Weimar Republic. This paper analyses a selection of Anglophone literature set in Weimar Berlin by the American and British writers Robert McAlmon, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, John Lehmann, and Stephen Spender. Not only were these writers themselves queer expatriates in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s, but they produced narratives of queer expatriation. I arg...
21st-Century Literary Cosmopolitanism: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Global Village
April 06, 2016 15:44 - 22 minutes - 41.9 MBArcana Albright examines the cosmopolitan dimension of contemporary Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s oeuvre, in particular his literary website. In multiple ways, contemporary Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s works constitute a meditation on the cosmopolitan ideal in the 21st century. In particular, Toussaint’s literary website represents an intriguing case study of intercultural collaboration in the digital age, with its focus on foreign correspondents, the collective work of...
The location of world literature: spaces of self-reflection
April 06, 2016 15:32 - 27 minutes - 50.1 MBGalin Tihanov seeks to locate the Anglo-Saxon discourse of ‘world literature’ vis-à-vis three major reference points: time, space, and language, and to examine the potential of literature to construct its own images of 'world literature'. Galin Tihanov seeks to locate the Anglo-Saxon discourse of ‘world literature’ vis-à-vis three major reference points: time, space, and language, and to examine the potential of literature to generate its own images of 'world literature', including those faci...
The International Culture of the Belle Époque: Media, Avant-Garde and Mass Culture in Europe (1880-1920)
April 06, 2016 15:29 - 21 minutes - 41.1 MBJulien Schuh examines the circulation of styles and ideas through periodicals in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. This paper analyses the conditions that allowed the birth of a culture of virality in the European press at the end the of nineteenth century through a specific style, 'Synthetism', which relied on abstraction and deformation. This style developed at the same time in the modernist magazines and in the periodicals of mass consumption.
An Ottoman Cosmopolitan in the Turkish Republic of Letters: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
April 06, 2016 15:25 - 18 minutes - 17 MBNagihan Haliloğlu posits Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar as a pioneer of literary cosmopolitanism in Turkey, considering his lectures on literature, given in 1950’s at the Turkish Literature department, Istanbul University. This paper aims to posit Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar as a pioneer of literary cosmopolitanism in Turkey, considering his Lectures on Literature, collection of lectures given in 1950’s at the Turkish Literature department, Istanbul University. The lectures reveal a literary cosmopolitanism t...
Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism. Reflections from an example : France between the two world wars
April 06, 2016 15:20 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MBGuillaume Bridet assesses how Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism interact and differ in the French literary context during the interwar period. Between the two world wars, a troubled period that constitutes a crisis of civilisation, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism are present at the same time in literary and intellectual French life. On one hand national writers as Maurice Barrès think that France can regenerate itself only by remaining faithful to the mainly ...
Indifférence engagée: Elites, modernism and cosmopolitanism
April 06, 2016 15:11 - 21 minutes - 19.8 MBFrancesca Billiani discusses cosmopolitism as practiced by the Italian cultural elites under the Fascist regime. During the Italian Fascist rule, Modernist literary and cultural journals engendered productive aesthetic debates about the role the arts had to play in relation to the political and cultural doctrine of the totalitarian state. In this respect, cosmopolitanism was a central concern for the Italian elites, since it allowed them to resist the totalitarian and universalistic politics ...
Two English Women Periodicals Editors in Italy: Theodosia Garrow Trollope and Helen Zimmern as literary and cultural Go-betweens
April 06, 2016 14:50 - 20 minutes - 38.5 MBIsabelle Richet analyses two English-language periodicals published by British expatriates in Florence in the 19th century. The large British expatriate community that settled in Florence in the second half of the 19th century engaged in many intellectual endeavours to promote Italian culture. This paper looks at two English-language periodicals, 'The Tuscan Athenaeum', edited by Theodosia Garrow Trollope in1848-1849 and 'The Florence Gazette', edited by Helen Zimmern from 1890 to 1915. It an...
Le Haiasdan, Arménie, Armenia: Language Choice and the Construction of an Armenian Diasporic Identity (1888-1905)
April 06, 2016 14:44 - 22 minutes - 40.9 MBStéphanie Prévost discusses what publishing an Armenian periodical in Paris & London, in another language than Armenian meant for the construction of an Armenian identity at the time of the national awakening (Zartonk). Paris & London have often been regarded as cosmopolitan cities, especially at the turn of the 20th century. This paper reflects on the decision of the Armenian Patriotic Committee and of Minas Tchéraz, a member of the Armenian delegation to the 1878 Congress of Berlin, to laun...
The Italian press in Egypt: Writing and Reading the Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism
April 06, 2016 14:40 - 23 minutes - 43.8 MBAlessandra Marchi examines the italian political press in Alexandria (Egypt), mainly at the beginning of the XX century. The Alexandrian cosmopolitanism can be studied through the prism of the Italian community and its representation in the national press circulating in Egypt, to illustrate some crucial interconnections between the press, literature, and political ideas, emerging from the work of some Italian-Alexandrian writers like Enrico Pea, Giuseppe Ungaretti, or Enrico Insabato and Leda...
Literary Encounters fostered by Nineteenth-Century Francophone Press published in the United Kingdom
April 06, 2016 14:29 - 15 minutes - 28.2 MBValentina Gosetti gives the first presentation in the seventh panel; Cosmopolitan Literary Exchange in the Transnational Press.
Une Femme m’apparut: Lesbian Desire and “French” Identity
April 06, 2016 14:23 - 26 minutes - 49.6 MBSarah Parker focuses on the love affair between the Decadent poets Olive Custance and Renée Vivien and the American writer Natalie Barney, arguing that affecting ‘Frenchness’ and writing in French allowed them to articulate their desire for one another. This paper focuses on the literary productions inspired by the love affair between the Decadent poets Olive Custance, Renée Vivien (née Pauline Tarn), and the American writer Natalie Barney. It draws primarily on Vivien’s roman à clef 'Une Fe...
The “Unspeakable” T. W. H. Crosland
April 06, 2016 14:07 - 22 minutes - 41.1 MBRebecca N. Mitchell discusses the anti-cosmopolitanism of litigious editor and literary gadfly T. W. H. Crosland. Poet, editor, and constant litigant T. W. H. Crosland (1868-1924) grounded claims of moral superiority and sexual propriety in vitriolic nationalism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Yet, as this paper argues, Crosland’s court testimony, published invective, and personal behavior distilled the aesthetic and moral narrowmindedness of anti-cosmopolitanism, ultimately promoting the very v...
The Relation of Fellow-Feeling to Sex: Laurence Housman and Queer Cosmopolitanism
April 06, 2016 13:57 - 21 minutes - 39.8 MBKristin Mahoney’s paper on Laurence Housman asserts that Housman implemented a Decadent vision of queer desire in his activist work in support of the pacifist and Indian independence movements in the 1930s and 40s. Author and illustrator Laurence Housman began his career as a ‘disciple of the Nineties’, a member of Oscar Wilde’s circle who worked frequently with the Decadent publisher John Lane, but during the twentieth century, he became more well known as a political activist, devoted to th...
The transnational Literary Field: Between (Inter)Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism (Keynote address)
April 05, 2016 16:15 - 50 minutes - 93.9 MBGisèle Sapiro traces the emergence of a transnational literary field in the twentieth century by analysing the book market for translations. Sapiro defines the notions of ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘international’, ‘transnational’, ‘global’ and ‘world’ from a historical and sociological point of view in order to show that they should not be understood to be in opposition to the national perspective. She then tackles the emergence of a transnational literary field and its inherent inequalities through th...
Make It… Foreign? The Cosmopolitan Aesthetics of Jaakooff Prelooker’s The Anglo-Russian
April 05, 2016 15:48 - 22 minutes - 41.9 MBMartina Ciceri explores the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Jaakoff Prelooker’s magazine 'The Anglo-Russian' in Late-Victorian England. At the turn of the 20th century, Russian emigration to Britain fostered cross-cultural encounters, offering an unprecedented opportunity for cosmopolitanism. This paper examines the importance Anglo-Russian exchanges had in Jaakoff Prelooker’s English career. By posing a challenge to hegemonic discourses and traditional narrative, such encounters triggered the neg...
Cosmopolitan Conglomeration and Orientalist Appropriation in Oscar Wilde’s The Sphinx
April 05, 2016 15:31 - 24 minutes - 44.8 MBKatharina Herold examines the interplay of cosmopolitanism and orientalism in Wilde's poem 'The Sphinx'. Wilde’s Orient is inspired by impressions from his father’s extended travels to the Middle East and North Africa in 1837, literary French influences, his friend Charles Ricketts and not least his own keen interest in ancient archaeology. Looking at images from the Middle East in Wilde’s poem 'The Sphinx' (published 1894), this paper interrogates Wilde’s literary manifestation of this cosmo...
'Intellectual cosmopolitanism affirms itself in the land': Hermes and the Basque-English Network of the 1920s
April 05, 2016 15:19 - 22 minutes - 41.1 MBLeire Barrera-Medrano explores the Basque-English Modernist network surrounding the journal 'Hermes' which represents a prominent example of the connection between cosmopolitan localism, nationalist politics and modernist aesthetics. In 1917 the Basque nationalist intelligentsia founded the cultural journal 'Hermes' with the intention to integrate nationalism and universal modern ideas. With the intention to construct a modern image of the industrial Basque Country, 'Hermes' endorsed a pro-Eu...
Defamiliarizing India: Cosmopolitanism as a condition of aesthetic and political Survival
April 05, 2016 13:33 - 21 minutes - 40.4 MBLaetitia Zecchini discusses the cosmopolitanism of several post-independence Indian poets and artists. Indian poets and artists situated in specific spaces, such as Arun Kolatkar, from Bombay, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, from Allahabad or Gulammohammed Sheikh from Baroda fashion a cosmopolitanism that must be envisaged as a context of creation, as a practice of writing, reading, translating and creating, and as a project. This project is inseparable from a poetics of 'reworlding' or defamiliariz...
Cosmopolitanism and Empire
April 05, 2016 13:28 - 16 minutes - 30 MBElleke Boehmer considers the cosmopolitan outlooks, experiences and values of Indian travellers to the west in the late 19th century. In the late 19th c a set of remarkable Indian ‘arrivants’ – scholars, poets, religious seekers, and political activists – began, as novelist Amitav Ghosh describes it, 'travelling in the west'. They included Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. In this paper I examine how their travel to and presence on British shores and invol...
Who are (or were) the Cosmopolitans? Thoughts from multilingual India
April 05, 2016 13:24 - 20 minutes - 38.4 MBWho are (or were) the Cosmopolitans? Thoughts from multilingual India
Daily Rhythms, urban Rhythms: City Films of the 1920s
April 05, 2016 12:21 - 24 minutes - 32.7 MBDaily Rhythms, urban Rhythms: City Films of the 1920s
Cosmopolitanism and Provincialism: Distant Intimacy and the Transatlantic Village Tale
April 05, 2016 12:18 - 22 minutes - 23.2 MBJosephine McDonagh shows under what circumstances the provincial may also be cosmopolitan by analysing Mary Russell Mitford's work and the case of the village tale. From Three Mile Cross, Mitford’s village home, across the Atlantic to Boston and beyond, Mitford’s village tales could be said to go global. This paper examines the way in which the village tale provides a set of terms and an imagined space through with circles of writers and literary people in different countries collectively con...
Virginia Woolf’s French Cloak, or, To the Lighthouse previews in Paris
April 05, 2016 12:12 - 28 minutes - 52.6 MBCaroline Patey analyses the strange anecdote of Virginia Woolf's first ever translation in French and the effect it had on her French reception. In 1926, 'Commerce' published a translation of 'Time Passes'/'Le temps passe' before the novel was even out in Great Britain and in English. Subsequent research has shown that the translator - Charles Mauron - was working on a version different from both holograph version and printed text. What is thus the status of the 'third' text? Did the choice ...
Brussels fin de siècle between Paris and London
April 05, 2016 12:07 - 23 minutes - 43.7 MBClément Dessy examines the Anglophilia of literary and artistic symbolist groups in Brussels. Between 1880 and 1930, Belgium and Brussels began to be perceived as places where cosmopolitanism could take root. This paper analyses the Anglophile attitude of Belgian literary and artistic avant-gardes. Belgian symbolists targeted both Paris and London in order to lift Brussels from its status of a second-level cultural capital to the level of the French and British metropoles.
Translational Equaliberty: Language as Cosmopolitan Right in the Europe of Migrations (Keynote address)
April 05, 2016 11:55 - 1 hour - 126 MBEmily Apter speaks about the right to a cosmopolitan citizenship, showing how questions of language and translation have acquired political urgency in the context of the global refugee crisis. Emily Apter discusses cosmopolitanism in relation to migration and the concept of linguistic citizenship. She explores the translation zone of the transit camp and detention centre, the status of the strait as middle passage of political peril, and the politics of translational triage and the accent te...