Radical Orientalism

Autorentext

Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. He has published articles in English Literary History, Modern Language Quarterly, Studies in Romanticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature, the Dickens Studies Annual, and Differences.

Klappentext

This book explores the relationship between ideas of the East and the struggle for democratic rights in the Romantic period.

Zusammenfassung
This fascinating study explores why ideas of the East mattered to Romantic writers, including Byron and the Shelleys, as well as their readers, political reformers and working-class activists. Imagining and invoking the Muslim world helped radicals to formulate their opposition to electoral disenfranchisement, police repression, and economic exploitation in Britain.

Inhalt

Introduction: radical Orientalism and the rights of man; 1. Cruel and unusual romance: Beckford, Byron, and the abomination of violence; 2. Reading the Oriental Riot Act: petition, assembly, and Shelley's constitutional sublime; 3. Splendors and miseries of the British Sultanate: economic Orientalism, inequality, and radical satire; 4. Reasoning like a Turk: indolence and fatalism in Sardanapalus and The Last Man; 5. Byronic infidelity and despotic individuality: sex, religion, and free agency; Bibliography.