Abstract
Rooted in earlier European interactions with and attitudes toward the East – including the Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid empires, as well as China and Japan – Orientalism took shape on several intersecting fronts, from academic scholarship to colonial administration to literary representation. This development, which impacted writing of the Romantic era, coincided with momentous political and cultural shifts in the global balance of power and attitudes toward national identity, particularly in Britain and France. Revolutions in America, France, and Haiti; Britain’s expansion of empire in India; debates about slavery and abolition; consumer demand for global commodities like spices, tea, and textiles; and other events contributed to the solidifying of Orientalism, a term coined by Edward Said to describe the political and cultural hegemony of the West over an imagined East. Romantic-era writers fueled Orientalist discourse: Fascinated by Eastern tropes, settings, and genres, women writers deployed them as tools in their efforts to affirm or critique European ideologies and practices of empire.
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Warren, Andrew. 2014. The Orient and the Young Romantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Williamson, B. (2023). Orientalism. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women's Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11945-4_210-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11945-4_210-2
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Latest
Orientalism- Published:
- 14 February 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11945-4_210-2
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Original
Orientalism- Published:
- 13 January 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11945-4_210-1