Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter

ISBN-13: 9781403976451 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 269 str.

Peter J. Kitson

Opis

Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter is a study of the origin, growth, and development of "the race idea" and its impact on the writing of the Romantic period. It discusses how race as a concept became increasingly important in defining difference and identity in Romantic period culture. Subjects including slavery, natural history, comparative anatomy, missionary, diplomatic, and travel writing are explored and texts by Coleridge, De Quincey, Mary Shelley, Byron, Equiano, and others are situated in the complex and shifting discourse of Romantic theories of race. In particular, Romantic representations of China and the "Far East" are discussed as a key site where the period's changing attitudes to human difference and variety were especially prominent.

Recenzje

'This, then, is an enlightening but saddening study of humanity's continuing struggle to comprehend and accept otherness. It adds much to our understanding of the Romantic period and to our grasp of many of the attitudes which still bedevil our relationships with our fellow men.' - Jeff Branch, The Use of English

'One of the strengths of Peter J. Kitson's important study...is that, while giving slavery and abolition due importance, it ranges far beyond them...Kitson's approach throughout is careful and circumspect, and he brings out the complexity and ambivalence of representations of race, as well as showing an awareness of the difficulties of relating colonial practice to metropolitan theory...[it is] the most wide-ranging and authoritative study available of the construction of race in the Romantic period.' British Association for Romantic Studies

Spis treści

Race and Romanticism the Current Debate The Race Idea Romantic Anatomies of Race Romantic Cannibalism Eating People in the South Seas Slavery: Abolitionist Writing Romantic Sinopolitans: Travellers, Diplomats and Khans Tartars, Mongols, Manchus and Chinese

O autorze

PETER J. KITSON is Professor of English at the University of Dundee, UK.