What do you think?
Rate this book
Utopia and Cosmopolis: Globalization in the Era of American Literary Realism
When did Americans first believe they were at the center of a truly global culture? How did they envision that culture and how much do recent attitudes toward globalization owe to their often utopian dreams? In Utopia and Cosmopolis Thomas Peyser asks these and other questions, offers a reevaluation of American literature and culture at the dawn of the twentieth century, and provides a new context for understanding contemporary debates about America’s relation to the rest of the world.
Applying current theoretical work on globalization to the writing of authors as diverse as Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dean Howells, and Henry James, Peyser reveals the ways in which turn-of-the-century American writers struggled to understand the future in a newly emerging global community. Because the pressures of globalization at once fostered the formation of an American national culture and made national culture less viable as a source of identity, authors grappled to find a form of fiction that could accommodate the contradictions of their condition. Utopia and Cosmopolis unites utopian and realist narratives in subtle, startling ways through an examination of these writers’ aspirations and anxieties. Whether exploring the first vision of a world brought together by the power of consumer culture, or showing how different cultures could be managed when reconceived as specimens in a museum, this book steadily extends the horizons within which late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature and culture can be understood.
Ranging widely over history, politics, philosophy, and literature, Utopia and Cosmopolis is an important contribution to debates about utopian thought, globalization, and American literature.
Applying current theoretical work on globalization to the writing of authors as diverse as Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dean Howells, and Henry James, Peyser reveals the ways in which turn-of-the-century American writers struggled to understand the future in a newly emerging global community. Because the pressures of globalization at once fostered the formation of an American national culture and made national culture less viable as a source of identity, authors grappled to find a form of fiction that could accommodate the contradictions of their condition. Utopia and Cosmopolis unites utopian and realist narratives in subtle, startling ways through an examination of these writers’ aspirations and anxieties. Whether exploring the first vision of a world brought together by the power of consumer culture, or showing how different cultures could be managed when reconceived as specimens in a museum, this book steadily extends the horizons within which late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature and culture can be understood.
Ranging widely over history, politics, philosophy, and literature, Utopia and Cosmopolis is an important contribution to debates about utopian thought, globalization, and American literature.
208 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 1998
13 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 18, 2025
A very interesting analysis of four American utopian works with the exploration of the role of cosmopolitan thinking in these works. Peyser analyzes works by Bellamy, Gilman, Howells, and Henry James.
The thread between each chapter is often tenuous, and James seems at times like a bit of an odd fit here. But the author draws on a diverse literature and provides some interesting insights.
The thread between each chapter is often tenuous, and James seems at times like a bit of an odd fit here. But the author draws on a diverse literature and provides some interesting insights.
October 14, 2025
In college, I took a class on Utopian & Dystopian literature, and the first half would have been very useful to read for that. Maybe I even did. The annotations scrawled in lovely penciled in handwriting by whoever read this last was also a plus.
HOWEVER, the author made a big assumption that everyone reading the book would be INTIMATELY familiar with Henry James and his work in the final chapter, and I was just LOST, because all I have ever read by Henry James is The Turn of the Screw. Also, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is literally just H.P. Lovecraft and The Rats in the Walls but also The Horror at Red Hook. Make of that what you will.
HOWEVER, the author made a big assumption that everyone reading the book would be INTIMATELY familiar with Henry James and his work in the final chapter, and I was just LOST, because all I have ever read by Henry James is The Turn of the Screw. Also, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is literally just H.P. Lovecraft and The Rats in the Walls but also The Horror at Red Hook. Make of that what you will.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews