British Romanticism in Asia: The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India and East Asia (Asia-Pacific and Literature in English)

This book examines the reception of British Romanticism in India and East Asia (including China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan). Building on recent scholarship on “Global Romanticism”, it develops a reciprocal, cross-cultural model of scholarship, in which “Asian Romanticism” is recognized as itself an important part of the Romantic literary tradition. It explores the connections between canonical British Romantic authors (including Austen, Blake, Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth) and prominent Asian writers (including Natsume Sōseki, Rabindranath Tagore, and Xu Zhimo). The essays also challenge Eurocentric assumptions about reception and periodization, exploring how, since the early nineteenth century, British Romanticism has been creatively adapted and transformed by Asian writers.

Alex Watson is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at Nagoya University, Japan, and the author of Romantic Marginality: Nation and Empire on the Borders of the Page (2012). 

Laurence Williams is Associate Professor of English at Sophia University, Japan. He holds a DPhil from Oxford and has previously held Canadian Commonwealth and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science research fellowships.