Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-176) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Romanticism, Orientalism, orientation -- 1. Situating the "Orient" in British Romantic poetry -- 2. Byron's cosmopolitan "East" -- 3. The racialized poetess -- 4. Disorienting Romanticism: William Blake's Orientalist poetics -- Conclusion.
Summary:
What happens when we redirect our reading along new paths, borders and orientations -- those that fail to fit neatly into the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West? In this innovative new study, Joey S. Kim traces shifting orientations -- cultural, geographical, aesthetic, racial and gendered -- through Orientalist sites, subjects and settings, to offer refreshing insights into the 'Orient' in British Romantic poetry. Examining what the 'Orient' is, where it is, who it stands for and where it leads, she coins the term 'poetics of orientation' to describe a poetics newly aware of cultural difference as a site of aesthetic contestation. Rather than situating the lyric subject in assumed racial whiteness, 'poetics of orientation' repositions it within discussions of Orientalism and racial formation, tracing the white supremacist logics that have for too long been dismissed as inessential or nonconsequential to Romantic studies--back cover.
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