Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature - Hardcover

by Winter Jade Werner (Author)

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature explores the notion that missionaries, often perceived as only evangelically motivated in the British imperial project, were also spurred on by cosmopolitan ideals. Winter Jade Werner makes this surprising connection in order to write against standard understandings of missionary work as well as typical understandings of cosmopolitanism as a deeply secular project.
Missionary Cosmopolitanism identifies the nineteenth-century novel as thematically and formally attuned to the tension between missionaries' cosmopolitan values and the moral impoverishment of their imperialist and expansionist practices. Werner's chapters interact with canonical works such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's Bleak House, along with lesser-known works by Robert Southey and Sydney Owenson. Ultimately, Missionary Cosmopolitanism demonstrates that nineteenth-century literature both illustrated and helped define missionary discourses regarding cosmopolitan ideas, showing how global evangelicalism continues to tap into the "new cosmopolitanisms" of today.

Author Biography

Winter Jade Werner is Assistant Professor at Wheaton College. She is the coeditor of Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion: Literary, Historical, and Religious Studies in Dialogue (OSU Press, 2019).