How do I style the names of centuries in MLA style?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

MLA style spells out the names of centuries in prose and in titles of English-language works, even when the title page uses a numeral:

Queen Victoria ruled England for most of the nineteenth century.

Music of the Twentieth Century

We make an exception and retain the numeral if it precedes an abbreviation in a title:

The Ekopolitan Project: Migrant Histories and Family Genealogies from 19th and 20th c. Lagos

For the titles of foreign-language works, we follow the source. Although the th in English-language ordinal numbers is set on the baseline, the equivalent in French—the abbreviations -e or -ième following numerals—is set superscript:

Manet et le monde du XIX^e siècle