Romanticism and the Counterfactual Chinese Awakening

Kitson, Peter (2019) Romanticism and the Counterfactual Chinese Awakening. In: Counterfactual Romanticism: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 277-299. ISBN 9781526107077

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Abstract

This essay develops a counterfactual reading of the Romantic period in which the topos of China is more significant. It takes as its premise the success of Thomas Percy's Chinese writings, the symbiosis of chinoiserie and gothic. It speculates about what might have happened if Coleridge had gone to Canton instead of Malta as he proposed, or Keats and Shelley had acted as surgeons on the East India Company ships. Situated in contemporary histories of sinology, this essay uses the premise of a more sympathetic and pervasive British understanding of Chinese culture to interrogate Sino-British cultural relations in the early nineteenth century.

Item Type: Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords: romanticism,china,orientalism,coleridge
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Research Group
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 22 Mar 2016 09:45
Last Modified: 26 Apr 2022 14:31
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/57907
DOI:

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