The cosmopolitan evolution : travel, travel narratives, and the revolution of the eighteenth century European consciousness / Matthew Binney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Binney, Matthew.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cosmopolitanism--Europe--History--18th century.

Cosmopolitanism.

Civilization.

History.

Europe--Civilization--Foreign influences.

Europe.

Physical Description:

241 pages : maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, MD : University Press of America, 2006.

Summary:

Critical works such as Srinivas Aravamudan's Tropicopolitans (1999) and Edward Said's Orientalism (1979) study the influence of Europe upon the colonized and also how the colonized resist its over-generalizing and oppressive drive; but, these and other works have failed to examine the impact of the "foreign" on the European consciousness. In The Cosmopolitan Evolution, Binney argues that reciprocity exists between the cultures and this relationship has not yet been sufficiently explored. Working from the concept of cosmopolitanism and incorporating textual evidence from philosophy, drama of the English Renaissance, seventeenth-century travel narratives, and eighteenth-century literature, this book explores the interactions between the European consciousness and the foreign. Binney also chronicles the development of cosmopolitanism from a form of representative universalism, which seeks to enfold all humans under one ideal, towards complex universalism, which seeks to account for alternate and particular views.

Contents:

Chapter 1 The Classical and Medieval Mind: The Predominance of Universalism without Complexity 11

Excursus I Systems Theory, Consciousness, and Virtue 35

Chapter 2 The Renaissance Consciousness: the Development of Internal Complexity through Boundaries and Self-Reference 41

Chapter 3 English Renaissance Drama and Self-Reference 61

Chapter 4 Seventeenth-Century Travel Narratives: Universalism and the Travel Consciousness 83

Chapter 5 Seventeenth-Century Travel Narratives: National Interests and Self-Reflection 111

Excursus II Oroonoko, Self-Reference, and the Internalization of the Foreign 131

Chapter 6 The Eighteenth-Century Consciousness and the Ascendancy of Cosmopolitan Particularism: Self-Regulation and Self-Governance 141

Chapter 7 The Eighteenth-Century Consciousness and Complex Universalism: Daniel Defoe, Self-Governance, and Sympathy 165.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [225]-235) and index.

ISBN:

0761834141

076183415X

OCLC:

67953806