Research Catalog

Title

Cosmopolitan minds : literature, emotion, and the transnational imagination / by Alexa Weik von Mossner.

Author

Weik von Mossner, Alexa.

Publication

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 236 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

• "During World War II and the early Cold War period, factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or class made a number of American writers feel marginalized in U.S. society. Cosmopolitan Minds focuses on a core of transnational writers -- Kay Boyle, Pearl S. Buck, William Gardner Smith, Richard Wright, and Paul Bowles -- who found themselves prompted to seek experiences outside of their home country, experiences that profoundly changed their self-understanding and creative imagination as they encountered alternative points of views and cultural practices in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Alexa Weik von Mossner offers a new perspective on the affective underpinnings of critical and reflexive cosmopolitanism by drawing on theories of emotion and literary imagination from cognitive psychology, philosophy, and cognitive literary studies. She analyzes how physical dislocation, and the sometimes violent shifts in understanding that result from our affective encounters with others, led Boyle, Buck, Smith, Wright, and Bowles to develop new, cosmopolitan solidarities across national, ethnic, and religious boundaries. She also shows how, in their literary texts, these writers employed strategic empathy to provoke strong emotions such as love, sympathy, compassion, fear, anger, guilt, shame, and disgust in their readers in order to challenge their parochial worldviews and practices. Reading these texts as emotionally powerful indictments of institutionalized racism and national violence inside and outside of the United States, Weik von Mossner demonstrates that our emotional engagements with others -- real and imagined -- are crucially important for the development of transnational and cosmopolitan imaginations" --
• "The book explores the role of empathy and emotion in the emergence of cosmopolitan imaginations through the works of a diverse set of American writers who during World War II and the early Cold War period lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa. It draws on theories of emotion and literary imagination from cognitive psychology, philosophy, and cognitive literary studies to offer a new perspective on the affective and imaginative underpinnings of critical and reflexive cosmopolitanism. It argues that our emotional engagements with others -- real and imagined -- are crucially important for the development of cosmopolitan imaginations. The book concentrates on specifically American cosmopolitan imaginations in the mid-twentieth century, focusing on a core of transnational writers who, for various reasons, had highly conflicted relationships with the American nation: Kay Boyle, Pearl S. Buck, Richard Wright, William Gardner Smith, and Paul Bowles. Their literary works are emotionally powerful indictments of institutionalized racism and national violence inside and outside of the United States; at the same time, they testify to the complex cosmopolitan identities of their authors. Reading these texts as affective cosmopolitan critiques, the book works out important and complex role played by imaginative and emotional engagements in the development of solidarities that go beyond self, family, community, and nation. Reading transnational American literature from a cognitive perspective, the book adds a new dimension to recent work in American literary history that seeks to reconceptualize U.S. literary and cultural production in its global context. At the same time, it also widens and deepens the array of literature available to researchers in cognitive literary studies" --

Series Statement

Cognitive approaches to literature and culture series

Uniform Title

Cognitive approaches to literature and culture series.

Alternative Title

Literature, emotion, and the transnational imagination

Subjects

• Empathy in literature
• Cosmopolitanism in literature
• Expatriate authors > History
• Cognition in literature
• Transnationalism in literature
• Authors, American > 20th century > Political and social views
• American fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• Expatriate authors > Psychology
• Human rights in literature

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Literature, Emotion, and the Cosmopolitan Imagination -- 1. Empathetic Cosmopolitanism: Kay Boyle and the Precariousness of Human Rights -- 2. Sentimental Cosmopolitanism: The Transcultural Feelings of Pearl S. Buck -- 3. Cosmopolitan Sensitivities: Bystander Guilt and Interracial Solidarity in the Work of William Gardner Smith -- 4. Cosmopolitan Contradictions: Fear, Anger, and the Transgressive Heroes of Richard Wright -- 5. The Limits of Cosmopolitanism: Disgust and Intercultural Horror in the Fiction of Paul Bowles -- Conclusion: (Eco-)Cosmopolitan Feelings? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Call Number

JFE 14-3872

ISBN

• 9780292739086 (hardback)
• 0292739087 (hardback)

LCCN

2013046020

OCLC

861541340

Author

Weik von Mossner, Alexa.

Title

Cosmopolitan minds : literature, emotion, and the transnational imagination / by Alexa Weik von Mossner.

Publisher

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2014.

Edition

First Edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Cognitive approaches to literature and culture series

Cognitive approaches to literature and culture series.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sudoc No.

Z UA380.8 W429co txdocs

Research Call Number

JFE 14-3872