Radical Orientalism: Rights, Reform, and Romanticism

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.

Author: Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/19/2017
Pages: 278
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.59d
ISBN: 9781107527041

About the Author
Cohen-Vrignaud, Gerard: - 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.