The Cosmopolitan Evolution: Travel, Travel Narratives, and the Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century European Consciousness [Hardcover]

Critical works such as Srinivas Aravamudan'sTropicopolitans(1999) and Edward Said'sOrientalism(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 Evolutionargues 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 and particular views.Matthew W. Binney, a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas, received his Ph.D. in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Auburn University. He has contributed to a number of scholarly journals and is a member of the American Society of Eighteenth Century Studies.

Chapter 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-Rló™