Orientalist Poetics

Orientalist Poetics is the only book on literary orientalism that spans the nineteenth century in both England and France with particular attention to poetry and poetics. It convincingly demonstrates orientalism's centrality to the evolution of poetry and poetics in both nations, and provides a singularly comprehensive and definitive analysis of the aesthetic impact of orientalism on nineteenth-century poetry. Because it examines the poetry of the entire century across both national literatures, the book is in a unique position to articulate the essential part orientalism plays in major developments of nineteenth-century poetics. Through probing discussions of an array of prominent nineteenth-century poets-including Shelley, Southey, Byron, Hugo, Musset, Leconte de Lisle, Wordsworth, Hemans, Gautier, Tennyson, Arnold and Wilde-Emily A. Haddad reveals how orientalism functions as a diffuse avant-garde, a crucial medium for the cultivation and refinement of a broad range of experimental positions on poetry and poetics. Haddad argues that while orientalist poems are often viewed mainly as artefacts of European attitudes towards the East and imperialism, poetic representations of the Islamic Orient also provide an indispensable matrix for the reexamination of such aesthetically fundamental issues as the purpose of poetry, the value of mimesis, and the relationship between nature and art. Orientalist Poetics effectively bridges the gap between the analysis of poetics and the analysis of orientalism. In showing that major poetic developments have roots in orientalism, Haddad's book offers a valuable and innovative revisionist view of nineteenth-century literary history.

Emily A. Haddad received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Since 1997 she has taught in the Department of English at the University of South Dakota, where she is an associate professor.

Contents: Introduction: To instruct without displeasing: Percy Shelley's The Revolt of Islam and Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer; Instruction in The Revolt of Islam; Tyranny: the Orient's chief export; Tyranny's comrades: religion and sexism; Orientalism and Shelley's poetics; Morals vs. materials: instruction and pleasure in Thalaba the Destroyer; The desert, Islam: foreignness as a hermeneutic category; The desert, Islam: foreignness as a hermeneutic category; Foreignness general and particular: character as archetype; Extremes: too many notes?; Southey and his readers: delighted, informed, or distressed; Representation and the Arabesque ornament; Representing, misrepresenting, not representing: Victor Hugo's Les Orientales and Alfred de Musset's Namouna: Hugo's preface: poetic ideals and the Orient as subject; La douleur du pacha: the Orient as origin or as end; Adieux de l'hÃ-tesse arabe :stasis; Novembre: returning to Paris, the self, and mimesis; Hugo's critics: E.J. Chételat; George Gordon Byron's Don Juan: But what's reality?; Namouna: fragmentary representation; No narrative, no representation; Authority, referents, and representation; The Middle East: impossible à décrire; Orientalist poetics and the nature of the Middle East; William Wordsworth and the nature of the Middle East; Felicia Hemans's ambivalence; Truth in illustrating Robert Southey and Thomas Moore; Leconte de Lisle: Le Désert, le désert du monde; Théophile Gautier: the composite desert; In deserto; European nature in absentia; Out of the desert: Byron's Turkish Tales; Matthew Arnold in Bukhara: nature in the Middle Eastern city; Alfred Tennyson's Basra: natural phenomena and urban construction; Orientalist poetics, Oscar Wilde; The Orient's art, orienting art; A confederation of the Middle East and art: Wordsworth; The Middle East as a source of art: Leconte de Lisle; Middle Eastern