The Orient and the Young Romantics (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)
Cambridge University Press, 11/6/2014
EAN 9781107071902, ISBN10: 1107071909
Hardcover, 286 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Through close readings of major poems, this book examines why the second-generation Romantic poets - Byron, Shelley, and Keats - stage so much of their poetry in Eastern or Orientalized settings. It argues that they do so not only to interrogate their own imaginations, but also as a way of criticizing Europe's growing imperialism. For them the Orient is a projection of Europe's own fears and desires. It is therefore a charged setting in which to explore and contest the limits of the age's aesthetics, politics and culture. Being nearly always self-conscious and ironic, the poets' treatment of the Orient becomes itself a twinned criticism of 'Romantic' egotism and the Orientalism practised by earlier generations. The book goes further to claim that poems like Shelley's Revolt of Islam, Byron's 'Eastern' Tales, or even Keats's Lamia anticipate key issues at stake in postcolonial studies more generally.
Introduction
from solipsism to Orientalism
1. 'The Book of Fate' and 'The Vice of the East'
Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and High Romantic Orientalism
Interchapter I. Montesquieu
nature and the Oriental despot
2. Byron's Lament
Lara (1814) and the specter of Orientalism
3. The spirit of Oriental solitude
Shelley's Alastor (1816) and Epipsychidion (1821)
Interchapter II. Rousseau's foreigners
4. 'The Great Sandy Desert of Politics'
the Orient and solitude in The Revolt of Islam (1818)
5. 'Unperplexing Bliss'
the Orient in Keats's Poetics
Bibliography.