Nels Pearson opens Irish Cosmopolitanism with an acknowledgment of the paradox embedded in his title: how can we speak of a particular, national variety of cosmopolitanism when cosmopolitanism makes claims for the affiliation of human beings as an inclusive, transnational community? What makes it possible for Pearson to speak or write of an “Irish Cosmopolitanism” is a series of developments in the discourse on cosmopolitanism dating back to the end of the last century. At that time, commentators in a variety of fields, including many dedicated to postcolonial studies, began to question the simple opposition between “national” and “global” experiences and to assert a more nuanced awareness of the relationship between a familiar homeland and the broader world, between cultural specificities and universal sympathies. Despite its more limited scope, Irish Cosmopolitanism takes its place alongside field-defining studies of literary cosmopolitanism from this period, such as Jessica Berman’s Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism,...
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June 01 2017
Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett by Nels Pearson
Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett
, by Pearson, Nels. University Press of Florida
, 2015
(paperback 2017). 179 pages.
Patrick Bixby
Patrick Bixby
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Patrick Bixby is associate professor of English at Arizona State University, author of Samuel Beckett and the Postcolonial Novel, and coeditor, with Gregory Castle, of Standish O’Grady’s Cuculain: A Critical Edition. He is currently finishing a book on Nietzsche and Irish modernism and coediting, with Castle, The Cambridge History of Irish Modernism.
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Twentieth-Century Literature (2017) 63 (2): 220–227.
Citation
Patrick Bixby; Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett by Nels Pearson. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 June 2017; 63 (2): 220–227. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-3923473
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