Date of Award

Spring 5-28-2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Elizabeth Fay

Abstract

This project seeks to interrogate the way that nineteenth-century Romantic authors incorporated tropes and depictions of the Near East in their poetry, and the relationship that their use of these tropes has to furthering the British Empire’s imperial aims. Drawing from the theory of “Orientalism” articulated by Edward Said, and his theoretical underpinnings in Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse analysis, I consider four major Romantic poets whose works articulate different versions of “The Orient” as a discursive entity. Said postulates that the “The Orient,” rather than being an inaccurate depiction of an existing geopolitical region, is a fabrication which is developed as part of an attempt to dominate and exploit particular cultures and regions. My project considers this fabrication in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” Lord Byron’s The Giaour, the so-called “Dream of the Arab” in William Wordsworth’s The Prelude, and in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s lyrical drama Hellas. Each of these poems presents some version of a dream vision, a fragment, or in incomplete presentation of “The Orient.” I argue that while the poets examined participate in this discourse, their use of “The Orient” within their works is critical of British imperialism and often seeks to draw the reader’s attention to the fractured, dreamlike and incomplete nature of Orientalist depictions.

Comments

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