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)
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ToolsKitson, Peter (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 |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | addict,addiction,china,de quincey,drugs,opium,literature and literary theory ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1208 |
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| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2021 00:06 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Apr 2022 00:27 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/80430 |
| DOI: | 10.3366/rom.2021.0524 |
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