Stefano Evangelista introduces the Cosmopolis & Beyond conference.

Annabel Williams explores the notion of hospitality in British modernist travel literature through the work of Rebecca West. This paper explores the notion of hospitality in British modernist travel literature, and argues for its significance to the period in initiating a cosmopolitics that paradoxically both challenges and capitulates to nationalist thinking, and to the privileged status that comes with a universalist cosmopolitan perspective. It uses the work of Rebecca West to demonstrate...

Fiona Macintosh examines the anxieties in pre-WW1 Britain surrounding social and theatrical, and especially Greek-inspired, dance, which becomes increasingly associated with moral decadence and dangerous 'cosmopolitanism'. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of drama was no longer deemed to reside exclusively in the word but in a ‘rhythm’ that encompassed word, body, set and score. With this new fascination with the moving body in performance spaces came a widespread...

Ben Robbins considers queer cosmopolitanism in the work of Anglophone writers who lived in Berlin during the era of the Weimar Republic. This paper analyses a selection of Anglophone literature set in Weimar Berlin by the American and British writers Robert McAlmon, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, John Lehmann, and Stephen Spender. Not only were these writers themselves queer expatriates in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s, but they produced narratives of queer expatriation. I...

Arcana Albright examines the cosmopolitan dimension of contemporary Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s oeuvre, in particular his literary website. In multiple ways, contemporary Belgian author Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s works constitute a meditation on the cosmopolitan ideal in the 21st century. In particular, Toussaint’s literary website represents an intriguing case study of intercultural collaboration in the digital age, with its focus on foreign correspondents, the collective work of...

Galin Tihanov seeks to locate the Anglo-Saxon discourse of ‘world literature’ vis-à-vis three major reference points: time, space, and language, and to examine the potential of literature to construct its own images of 'world literature'. Galin Tihanov seeks to locate the Anglo-Saxon discourse of ‘world literature’ vis-à-vis three major reference points: time, space, and language, and to examine the potential of literature to generate its own images of 'world literature', including those...

Julien Schuh examines the circulation of styles and ideas through periodicals in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. This paper analyses the conditions that allowed the birth of a culture of virality in the European press at the end the of nineteenth century through a specific style, 'Synthetism', which relied on abstraction and deformation. This style developed at the same time in the modernist magazines and in the periodicals of mass consumption.

Nagihan Haliloğlu posits Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar as a pioneer of literary cosmopolitanism in Turkey, considering his lectures on literature, given in 1950’s at the Turkish Literature department, Istanbul University. This paper aims to posit Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar as a pioneer of literary cosmopolitanism in Turkey, considering his Lectures on Literature, collection of lectures given in 1950’s at the Turkish Literature department, Istanbul University. The lectures reveal a literary cosmopolitanism...

Guillaume Bridet assesses how Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism interact and differ in the French literary context during the interwar period. Between the two world wars, a troubled period that constitutes a crisis of civilisation, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism are present at the same time in literary and intellectual French life. On one hand national writers as Maurice Barrès think that France can regenerate itself only by remaining faithful to the mainly...

Francesca Billiani discusses cosmopolitism as practiced by the Italian cultural elites under the Fascist regime. During the Italian Fascist rule, Modernist literary and cultural journals engendered productive aesthetic debates about the role the arts had to play in relation to the political and cultural doctrine of the totalitarian state. In this respect, cosmopolitanism was a central concern for the Italian elites, since it allowed them to resist the totalitarian and universalistic politics...

Isabelle Richet analyses two English-language periodicals published by British expatriates in Florence in the 19th century. The large British expatriate community that settled in Florence in the second half of the 19th century engaged in many intellectual endeavours to promote Italian culture. This paper looks at two English-language periodicals, 'The Tuscan Athenaeum', edited by Theodosia Garrow Trollope in1848-1849 and 'The Florence Gazette', edited by Helen Zimmern from 1890 to 1915. It...

Stéphanie Prévost discusses what publishing an Armenian periodical in Paris & London, in another language than Armenian meant for the construction of an Armenian identity at the time of the national awakening (Zartonk). Paris & London have often been regarded as cosmopolitan cities, especially at the turn of the 20th century. This paper reflects on the decision of the Armenian Patriotic Committee and of Minas Tchéraz, a member of the Armenian delegation to the 1878 Congress of Berlin,...

Alessandra Marchi examines the italian political press in Alexandria (Egypt), mainly at the beginning of the XX century. The Alexandrian cosmopolitanism can be studied through the prism of the Italian community and its representation in the national press circulating in Egypt, to illustrate some crucial interconnections between the press, literature, and political ideas, emerging from the work of some Italian-Alexandrian writers like Enrico Pea, Giuseppe Ungaretti, or Enrico Insabato and Leda...

Valentina Gosetti gives the first presentation in the seventh panel; Cosmopolitan Literary Exchange in the Transnational Press.

Sarah Parker focuses on the love affair between the Decadent poets Olive Custance and Renée Vivien and the American writer Natalie Barney, arguing that affecting ‘Frenchness’ and writing in French allowed them to articulate their desire for one another. This paper focuses on the literary productions inspired by the love affair between the Decadent poets Olive Custance, Renée Vivien (née Pauline Tarn), and the American writer Natalie Barney. It draws primarily on Vivien’s roman à clef 'Une...

Rebecca N. Mitchell discusses the anti-cosmopolitanism of litigious editor and literary gadfly T. W. H. Crosland. Poet, editor, and constant litigant T. W. H. Crosland (1868-1924) grounded claims of moral superiority and sexual propriety in vitriolic nationalism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Yet, as this paper argues, Crosland’s court testimony, published invective, and personal behavior distilled the aesthetic and moral narrowmindedness of anti-cosmopolitanism, ultimately promoting the very...

Kristin Mahoney’s paper on Laurence Housman asserts that Housman implemented a Decadent vision of queer desire in his activist work in support of the pacifist and Indian independence movements in the 1930s and 40s. Author and illustrator Laurence Housman began his career as a ‘disciple of the Nineties’, a member of Oscar Wilde’s circle who worked frequently with the Decadent publisher John Lane, but during the twentieth century, he became more well known as a political activist, devoted to...

Gisèle Sapiro traces the emergence of a transnational literary field in the twentieth century by analysing the book market for translations. Sapiro defines the notions of ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘international’, ‘transnational’, ‘global’ and ‘world’ from a historical and sociological point of view in order to show that they should not be understood to be in opposition to the national perspective. She then tackles the emergence of a transnational literary field and its inherent inequalities through...

Martina Ciceri explores the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Jaakoff Prelooker’s magazine 'The Anglo-Russian' in Late-Victorian England. At the turn of the 20th century, Russian emigration to Britain fostered cross-cultural encounters, offering an unprecedented opportunity for cosmopolitanism. This paper examines the importance Anglo-Russian exchanges had in Jaakoff Prelooker’s English career. By posing a challenge to hegemonic discourses and traditional narrative, such encounters triggered the...

Katharina Herold examines the interplay of cosmopolitanism and orientalism in Wilde's poem 'The Sphinx'. Wilde’s Orient is inspired by impressions from his father’s extended travels to the Middle East and North Africa in 1837, literary French influences, his friend Charles Ricketts and not least his own keen interest in ancient archaeology. Looking at images from the Middle East in Wilde’s poem 'The Sphinx' (published 1894), this paper interrogates Wilde’s literary manifestation of this...

Leire Barrera-Medrano explores the Basque-English Modernist network surrounding the journal 'Hermes' which represents a prominent example of the connection between cosmopolitan localism, nationalist politics and modernist aesthetics. In 1917 the Basque nationalist intelligentsia founded the cultural journal 'Hermes' with the intention to integrate nationalism and universal modern ideas. With the intention to construct a modern image of the industrial Basque Country, 'Hermes' endorsed a...

Laetitia Zecchini discusses the cosmopolitanism of several post-independence Indian poets and artists. Indian poets and artists situated in specific spaces, such as Arun Kolatkar, from Bombay, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, from Allahabad or Gulammohammed Sheikh from Baroda fashion a cosmopolitanism that must be envisaged as a context of creation, as a practice of writing, reading, translating and creating, and as a project. This project is inseparable from a poetics of 'reworlding' or...

Elleke Boehmer considers the cosmopolitan outlooks, experiences and values of Indian travellers to the west in the late 19th century. In the late 19th c a set of remarkable Indian ‘arrivants’ – scholars, poets, religious seekers, and political activists – began, as novelist Amitav Ghosh describes it, 'travelling in the west'. They included Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. In this paper I examine how their travel to and presence on British shores and...

Who are (or were) the Cosmopolitans? Thoughts from multilingual India