Cosmopolitanism and the Anglo-Jewish Elite in British America

During the eighteenth century, cosmopolitanism contributed to the attenuation of ethnicity as a ground of self-understanding. My concern here is to determine how literary neoclassicism assisted in the cosmopolite project of overcoming indigenous identity. I will also illustrate some effective limits of cosmopolitanism by examining the self-expression of members of the Levy-Franks family, British America’s wealthiest and most articulate Jewish clan. In particular, I will show how cosmopolitanism enabled the Jewish elite to participate in the conversation and commerce of the public sphere but provoked a crisis of identity when it enabled the intermarriage of Jew and gentile, threatening the traditionalism of the Jewish family.

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Clan · Conversation · Cosmopolitanism · Elite · Ethnic group · Identity (music) · Indigenous · Jewish studies · Judaism · Political science · Public sphere · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies