Description
Book SynopsisThis fascinating study explores why ideas of the East mattered to Romantic writers, including Byron and the Shelleys, as well as their readers, political reformers and working-class activists. Imagining and invoking the Muslim world helped radicals to formulate their opposition to electoral disenfranchisement, police repression, and economic exploitation in Britain.
Trade Review'… this is a fascinating and rewarding study that sheds new light on established ideas about British Romanticism's engagement with the 'Orient' while pointing to further issues yet to be addressed.' Cian Duffy, Modern Philology
'… Cohen-Vrignaud's rich study demonstrates that there is still much to debate and discuss, and it will provide a valuable scholarly resource.' James Watt, Review of English Studies
Table of ContentsIntroduction: radical Orientalism and the rights of man; 1. Cruel and unusual romance: Beckford, Byron, and the abomination of violence; 2. Reading the Oriental Riot Act: petition, assembly, and Shelley's constitutional sublime; 3. Splendors and miseries of the British Sultanate: economic Orientalism, inequality, and radical satire; 4. Reasoning like a Turk: indolence and fatalism in Sardanapalus and The Last Man; 5. Byronic infidelity and despotic individuality: sex, religion, and free agency; Bibliography.
