Literatures of Liberalization ― Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century

This book traces the global circulation of cultures and ideologies from the technological and democratic revolutions of the long nineteenth century to liberal and neoliberal modernity. Focussing on moments of coerced (colonial and postcolonial) and voluntary contact rather than national boundaries, the author draws attention to the global scope of literatures and geopolitical commodities as actants in world affairs, as in processes of liberalization, democratization, and trade, but also to the distinctiveness of each local environment at its moments of transculturation. Based in extensive experience in collaborative, multilingual, interdisciplinary networks, the book synthesizes existing theoretical scholarship, provides original case studies of world-historical Victorian and modern writers, and articulates a new interdisciplinary methodology for literary studies in a global context. It will be of interest to Victorianists, modernists, comparatists, political theorists, translators, and scholars of world literatures, world ecology, and globalization.

Regenia Gagnier has held chairs at Stanford University, USA, and the University of Exeter, UK, where she is Professor of English Language and Literature. She has held fellowships at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Oxford, and the Guggenheim, and Visiting Professorships at British Columbia, Delhi, Leeds Trinity, Melbourne, Oxford, and Vanderbilt. She is author of Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (1986); Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920 (1991); Individualism, Decadence, and Globalization: On the Relationship of Part to Whole 1859-1920 (2010) and many edited collections and articles.