COSMOPOLITAN SHAW AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Abstract

In 1920, when G. B. Shaw, somewhat nostalgically, gave tribute to Vernon Lee's cosmopolitanism, contemporary readers may have wondered about implication, since World War I had radically changed meaning of term. Victorian cosmopolitanism, a product of European idealism and Kant's world at large, had become an ambivalent term under impact of British war propaganda with its emphasis on nationalism and patriotism. When Shaw applied term to Lee in 1920, international thinking had just begun to return to public sphere, but both writers' critical writing during war provides enough evidence that forms of cosmopolitan consciousness persevered at least among dissident groups even when national pressure demanded intellectual conformity. In fact, one may argue that independent public intellectuals like Shaw and Lee, despite their minority status in war, helped transform public sphere and what theorists since Kant have called the norm of publicity.1 While cosmopolitanism has recently made a comeback as a concept for rethinking global identities and attachments, nineteenth-century version of term basically meant hope for a united, cooperative Europe.2 In British literature, it could mean Anglo-European citizenship, and on Continent, Franco-German rapprochement.3 Cosmopolitanism became a contested concept at end of nineteenth century and, especially, around World War I. On one hand, term reflected anxi-