Description
Book SynopsisCritical 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. The Cosmopolitan Evolution argues that reciprocity exists between the cultures and that 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 an
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction Chapter 3 Chapter 1. The Classical and Medieval Mind: The Predominance of Universalism without Complexity Chapter 4 Excursus I. Systems Theory, Consciousness, and Virtue Chapter 5 Chapter 2. The Renaissance Consciousness: The Development of Internal Complexity Through Boundaries and Self-Reference Chapter 6 Chapter 3. English Renaissance Drama and Self-Reference Chapter 7 Chapter 4. Seventeenth-Century Travel Narratives: Universalism and the Travel Consciousness Chapter 8 Chapter 5. Seventeenth-Century Travel Narratives: National Interests and Self-Reflection Chapter 9 Excursus II. Oroonoko, Self-Reference, and the Internalization of the Foreign Chapter 10 Chapter 6. The Eighteenth-Century Consciousness and the Ascendancy of Cosmopolitan Particularism: Self-Regulation and Self-Governance Chapter 11 Chapter 7. The Eighteenth-Century Consciousness and Complex Universalism: Daniel Defoe, Self-Governance, and Sympathy Chapter 12 Conclusion Chapter 13 Notes Chapter 14 Bibliography Chapter 15 Index
