This fascinating study reveals the extent to which the Orientalism of Byron and the Shelleys resonated with the reformist movement of the Romantic era. It documents how and why radicals like Bentham, Cobbett, Carlile, Hone and Wooler, among others in post-Revolutionary Britain, invoked Turkey, North Africa and Mughal India when attacking and seeking to change their government's domestic policies. Examining a broad archive ranging from satires, journalism, tracts, political and economic treatises, and public speeches, to the exotic poetry and fictions of canonical Romanticism, Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud shows that promoting colonization was not Orientalism's sole ideological function. Equally vital was its aesthetic and rhetorical capacity to alienate the people's affection from their rulers and fuel popular opposition to regressive taxation, penal cruelty, police repression, and sexual regulation.
| ISBN: | 9781107527041 |
| Publication date: | 19th October 2017 |
| Author: | Gerard University of Tennessee CohenVrignaud |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 278 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in Romanticism |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 International relations Colonialism and imperialism |