The Love of Strangers: Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle

陌生人之爱：世纪末英国文学世界主义

• 批准号: AH/L015064/1
• 负责人: Stefano Evangelista
• 金额: $ 23.13万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2014 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FL015064%2F1
• 关键词: Love; Strangers; Literary; Cosmopolitanism; English

The proposed research will lead to a book entitled The Love of Strangers: Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English 'Fin de Siècle', as well as to two workshops and an international conference designed to explore cosmopolitanism within and beyond the specific historical context of the 1890s.Throughout, I aim to show that knowing how cosmopolitanism was understood in the 1890s can enhance our understanding of, and participation in, the debates around national identity and globalisation that are current in our own day. Cosmopolitanism, derived from the ancient Greek for 'world citizenship', offers a radical alternative to the ideology of nationalism, asking individuals to imagine themselves as part of a global community that goes beyond national and linguistic boundaries. The 1890s witnessed a widespread public debate on cosmopolitanism: in Britain and throughout Europe, this period saw a clash between ideologies of trans-national cooperation and universalism, partly promoted by modern transport and communication technologies, and the rising nationalism that would culminate in the First World War. My research will show that the 1890s controversy around cosmopolitanism, largely uncharted so far, is a shaping influence on the literary culture of this decade which has long been recognised as a crucial turning point in literary history. Promoters of literary cosmopolitanism questioned the supposedly fundamental link between literature, national identity, and national language: they deliberately sought out the strange and foreign in their works in order to create new ways of reading and writing that crossed boundaries between languages and literary genres as much as between different nations. These practices were denounced as politically and morally suspect by the detractors of cosmopolitanism, who stressed the responsibilities of literature towards local communities and the nation. I aim to show that a nuanced and historically-accurate understanding of the debate on cosmopolitanism transforms our understanding of the literary culture of the fin de siècle, allowing us to move beyond the categories of decadence, impressionism, and symbolism that have dominated the critical tradition. In order to do so, I concentrate on authors who embrace the cosmopolitan ideal but are also careful to define what is at stake in the controversy surrounding it. My monograph will therefore be divided into five chapters that examine, respectively: Oscar Wilde; George Egerton (Mary Dunne Bright); Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé); John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis; and Henry James. Drawing mainly on articles in the periodical press, the introduction will aim to reconstruct the meaning and associations of the term 'cosmopolitanism' for readers in the 1890s, teasing out its literary implications; while the conclusion will relate the 1890s debate on cosmopolitanism to our current discussion about global/local identities. My case studies have been chosen in order to break down existing distinctions between canonical and marginal writers, 'high' and popular literature, male and female authorship. I will show that the debate on cosmopolitanism involved authors and readerships with very different aesthetic and political agendas. Each chapter draws both on published and archival material in order to piece together literary networks that connect English works from this period with a range of French, Scandinavian, Italian, and German sources. A particularly original aspect of my approach is the emphasis on gender: I argue that politically and socially marginalised groups such as women and homosexual men were drawn to the cosmopolitan ideal as a utopian path towards artistic and personal freedom; and conversely, that cosmopolitanism, with its attack on traditional models of national identity, generated new ways of understanding the body, gender, and sexual identities.

拟议中的研究将产生一本名为《陌生人的爱：英语中的文学世界主义》的书，以及两个研讨会和一个国际会议，旨在探索19世纪90年代特定历史背景下的世界主义。最后，我的目标是表明，了解19世纪90年代世界主义是如何被理解的，可以增强我们对当今时代围绕国家认同和全球化的辩论的理解和参与。世界主义源于古希腊语，意为“世界公民身份”，它为民族主义意识形态提供了一种激进的替代方案，要求个人将自己想象成超越国家和语言界限的全球社区的一部分。19世纪90年代见证了一场关于世界主义的广泛公开辩论：在英国和整个欧洲，在这一时期，部分由现代交通和通信技术推动的跨国合作和普遍主义的意识形态与日益高涨的民族主义之间发生了冲突，最终导致第一次世界大战。我的研究将表明，19世纪90年代围绕世界主义的争议，迄今基本上是未知的，正在对这十年的文学文化产生影响，而这十年一直被认为是文学史上的一个关键转折点。文学世界主义的倡导者质疑文学、民族认同和民族语言之间所谓的根本联系：他们故意在作品中寻找陌生和陌生的东西，以创造跨越语言和文学体裁之间以及不同民族之间的边界的新的阅读和写作方式。这些做法被世界主义的批评者谴责为政治和道德上的可疑之处，他们强调文学对当地社区和国家的责任。我的目的是表明，对世界主义辩论的细微差别和历史上的准确理解改变了我们对文学文化的理解，使我们能够超越主导批评传统的颓废、印象主义和象征主义范畴。为了做到这一点，我专注于那些拥护世界主义理想的作家，但也谨慎地定义了围绕它的争议中的利害关系。因此，我的专著将分为五章，分别考察：奥斯卡·王尔德；乔治·埃格顿(玛丽·邓恩·布莱特饰)；欧伊达(玛丽亚·路易斯·拉梅饰)；约翰·阿丁顿·西蒙兹和哈维洛克·埃利斯；以及亨利·詹姆斯。引言主要以期刊上的文章为基础，旨在为19世纪90年代的读者重建“世界主义”一词的含义和联系，梳理出它的文学含义；而结束语将把19世纪90年代关于世界主义的辩论与我们目前关于全球/地方身份的讨论联系起来。选择我的案例研究是为了打破经典作家和边缘作家、高级文学和通俗文学、男性和女性作者之间的现有区别。我将展示，有关世界主义的辩论涉及作者和读者，他们有着截然不同的审美和政治议程。每一章都借鉴了出版和档案材料，以便将这一时期的英语作品与一系列法语、斯堪的纳维亚语、意大利语和德语来源联系起来。我的方法的一个特别独到的方面是对性别的强调：我认为，被政治和社会边缘化的群体，如女性和男同性恋者，被吸引到世界主义理想中，将其作为通向艺术和个人自由的乌托邦道路；相反，世界主义对传统国家认同模式的攻击，产生了理解身体、性别和性认同的新方式。

项目成果

Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle - Citizens of Nowhere

英国世纪末的文学世界主义 - 无名公民

• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198864240.001.0001
• 发表时间: 2021
• 作者: Evangelista S

Arthur Symons: Poet, Critic, Vagabond

阿瑟·西蒙斯：诗人、批评家、流浪者

• 发表时间: 2018
• 作者: Dessy C

Les Plumes du coq

公鸡羽毛

• 发表时间: 2016
• 作者: Dessy C

Literary Communities in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Space, Place and IdentityIntroduction

十九世纪末二十世纪初的文学共同体：空间、场所与身份导论

• DOI: 10.1093/fmls/cqx016
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Forum for Modern Language Studies
• 影响因子: 0.2
• 作者: Bullock P

Une esthétique de la rue. La Revue blanche au coeur de la ville

Une esthétique de la rue。

• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: Romantisme
• 影响因子: 0.1
• 作者: Dessy C