Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture - Softcover
The central argument of Edward Said's Orientalism is that the relationship between Britain and its colonies was primarily oppositional, based on contrasts between conquest abroad and domestic order at home. Saree Makdisi directly challenges that premise in Making England Western, identifying the convergence between the British Empire's civilizing mission abroad and a parallel mission within England itself, and pointing to romanticism as one of the key sites of resistance to the imperial culture in Britain after 1815. Makdisi argues that there existed places and populations in both England and the colonies that were thought of in similar terms - for example, there were sites in England that might as well have been Arabia, and English people to whom the idea of the freeborn Englishman did not extend. The boundaries between "us" and "them" began to take form during the romantic period, when England became a desirable Occidental space, connected with but superior to distant lands. Delving into the works of Wordsworth, Austen, Byron, Dickens, and others to trace an arc of celebration, ambivalence, and criticism influenced by these imperial dynamics, Makdisi demonstrates the extent to which romanticism offered both hopes for and warnings against future developments in Occidentalism. Revealing that romanticism provided a way to resist imperial logic about improvement and moral virtue, Making England Western is an exciting contribution to the study of both British literature and colonialism.
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Review:
"[A] highly accomplished study....Always interesting, politically radical and yet scholarly, this book makes a worthy successor to Said's "Culture and Imperialism.""
--Claire Chambers "Times Higher Education "
"[A] highly accomplished study. . . . Always interesting, politically radical and yet scholarly, this book makes a worthy successor to Said's "Culture and Imperialism.""--Claire Chambers "Times Higher Education "
[A] highly accomplished study. . . . Always interesting, politically radical and yet scholarly, this book makes a worthy successor to Said's "Culture and Imperialism." --Claire Chambers "Times Higher Education ""
An erudite and intelligent study At a juncture when the field of Victorian studies is animated by debates about the virtues of historicism, Makdisi s book is an especially edifying read . "Making England Western" throws us profitably back onto the variety of crooked paths along which the field has traveled and reminds us that the question of how to think the Victorian period postcolonially remains an open and provocative one. --Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois "Victorian Studies ""
About the Author:
--Claire Chambers "Times Higher Education "
"[A] highly accomplished study. . . . Always interesting, politically radical and yet scholarly, this book makes a worthy successor to Said's "Culture and Imperialism.""--Claire Chambers "Times Higher Education "
[A] highly accomplished study. . . . Always interesting, politically radical and yet scholarly, this book makes a worthy successor to Said's "Culture and Imperialism." --Claire Chambers "Times Higher Education ""
An erudite and intelligent study At a juncture when the field of Victorian studies is animated by debates about the virtues of historicism, Makdisi s book is an especially edifying read . "Making England Western" throws us profitably back onto the variety of crooked paths along which the field has traveled and reminds us that the question of how to think the Victorian period postcolonially remains an open and provocative one. --Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois "Victorian Studies ""
Saree Makdisi is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of three books, including William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 0226923150
- ISBN 13 9780226923154
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
- Rating
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