Cosmopolitanism and Affect in Henry James’ The Ambassadors

Authors

  • Fabia Buescher University of Cambridge

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.1.10036

Abstract

This essay explores the interplay between cosmopolitanism and affect in Henry James’ The Ambassadors. It reads the novel’s protagonist, Strether, as an embodiment of the cosmopolitan flâneur and examines how he complicates and challenges this identity as conceptualised by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. Due to his evasive cosmopolitan identity, Strether fails to maintain affective bonds with other characters. As such, The Ambassadors challenges James’ own sense of cosmopolitanism by staging various iterations of affect, most notably grief, guilt and loss, as undermining the cosmopolitanism the novel at first seems to promote. I conclude that Strether’s acute emotional responses can be read as a critique of the cosmopolitan flâneur who possesses a level of detachment that is not desirable. The novel levels a critique against cosmopolitanism’s seeming universalism. This tends to promote an abstract ideal that disregards the cosmopolite’s individual emotions and sensationsin The Ambassadors, cosmopolitanism is a fundamentally unethical way of living.

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Published

08-Oct-2024

Issue

Section

Ugly Feelings

How to Cite

“Cosmopolitanism and Affect in Henry James’ The Ambassadors”. 2024. FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & The Arts 35 (1). https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.1.10036.