Contesting Cosmopolitan Moments in the Long Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism) - Softcover

Enit Karafili Steiner

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1399524968 ISBN 13: 9781399524964

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2026

Synopsis

Examines literary manifestations of eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism to reveal cosmopolitanism’s relevance for postcoloniality

• Discusses adaptations of Stoic and Cynic cosmopolitanism in long-eighteenth-century texts
• Reads related ideas of European, Muslim, and Confucian cosmopolitanism side by side
• Builds dialogue between the long eighteenth century and postcolonial studies
• Addresses cosmopolitanism as a literary style and hermeneutical tool
• Argues the relevance of literary cosmopolitanism for other disciplines: e.g., translation, Transatlantic slavery, decolonial, Earth, and medical studies

Contesting Cosmopolitan Moments in the Long Eighteenth Century traces expansions of Classical cosmopolitanism in long-eighteenth-century Britain to shows how acts of inclusion from cosmopolitan viewpoints sought to cope with British imperialism, war, social injustice, slavery, and technologies of self- and societal improvement, concerns that survive to this day. The Classical inheritance uncovered here yields more precise contouring of cosmopolitanism and of the eighteenth-century innovations that prefigure postcolonial debates. Additionally, considerations of style fill a lacuna in eighteenth-century literary studies, where cosmopolitanism remains a rather under-explored hermeneutical tool. Inviting readers to appreciate cosmopolitanism as a developing rather than as a static and completed philosophy, this study refutes an objection that circulated in the eighteenth century and is still present today, namely, cosmopolitanism’s disdain for local values.

About this title

About the Author

Enit Karafili Steiner is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She is the editor of Cosmopolitan Endeavours (2020), and author of Northanger Abbey/Persuasion: Readers’ Guide to Essential Criticism (2016) and Jane Austen's Civilized Women: Morality, Gender and the Civilizing Process (2012). She has also edited Called to Civil Existence: Dialogues on Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2014) and Frances Brooke's The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (2013).

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1399524968
• ISBN 13: 9781399524964
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240