Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of ModernityThe years between 1790 and 1830 saw over a hundred and fifty million people brought under British imperial control, and one of the most momentous outbursts of British literary and artistic production, announcing a new world of social and individual traumas and possibilities. This book traces the emergence of new forms of imperialism and capitalism as part of a culture of modernisation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and looks at the ways in which they were identified with and contested in Romanticism. Saree Makdisi argues that this process has to be understood in global terms, beyond the British and European viewpoint, and that developments in India, Africa, and the Arab world (up to and including our own time) enable us to understand more fully the texts and contexts of British Romanticism. New and original readings of texts by Wordsworth, Blake, Byron, Shelley, and Scott emerge in the course of this searching analysis of the cultural process of globalisation. Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 1998. |
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Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity Saree Makdisi No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
Alastor anti-modern argues Blake's Britain British Burke Byron Cambridge University Press capitalism chapter Childe Harold claim clan colonial concept Criticism crowd cultural defined discourse E. P. Thompson economic Edward eighteenth century emergence England English Europe European Fabian Fredric Jameson Gleckner global Golgonooza Greece Greeks Harmondsworth Harold Bloom hence Highland Clearances Hobsbawm Ibid ideology images imaginary map imperial industrial Ireland Jacobite Jacobite Rebellion Jerusalem land landscape late eighteenth London Lowlands M. H. Abrams material Mill movement narrative narrator Nature novel Orient past poem poetry political pre-modern Prelude present process of modernization production Revolution romantic period Romanticism ruins Scotland Scott Scottish Scottish Highlands sense Shelley simultaneously social Song of Los space of London space-time spatial spot structures sublime symbolic temporal tion trans transformation Universal Empire Urizen vision Visionary Waverley Waverley's William Blake words Wordsworth writes York