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Kitson, Peter 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8947-4859
(2021)
Opium and addiction in a cross-cultural context: De Quincey’s ‘Confessions’ (1821) and the Chinese novel, Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou (Fengyue meng) (c. 1848).
Romanticism, 27 (3).
pp. 309-321.
ISSN 1354-991X
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Abstract
This essay examines De Quincey’s representation of opium ‘addiction’ in the cross-cultural context of Britain and China in the light of recent revisionist medical discussions of addiction and dependence, and revisionist historical writing about opium use in nineteenth-century China. De Quincey’s representation of the opium user is compared to that of China’s first ‘city novel’, Courtesans and Opium: Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou believed to have been written in 1848 (trans 2009). In this complex fiction, opium smoking is presented as a largely pleasurable and common pastime which has the potential for danger if abused by the unwary. It is not connected with dreams and nightmares, or figured as a stimulus of, or analogy for, the creative imagination. It offers a fascinating view of the leisure world of nineteenth-century China, where recreational opium smoking is common and not problematic when undertaken moderately.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | addict,addiction,china,de quincey,drugs,opium,literature and literary theory ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1208 |
| 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 |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2021 00:06 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Oct 2022 02:36 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/80430 |
| DOI: | 10.3366/rom.2021.0524 |
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