Writing the Empire:
Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism
Carol Bolton
The Enlightenment World
978 1 85196 863 3: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 544 1
Bolton examines a broad range of Robert Southey’s writing to explore the relationship between Romantic literature and colonial politics during the expansion of Britain’s second empire.
After decades of neglect, Southey’s centrality to Romantic period culture is at last being recognized. Bolton’s study draws upon a wide range of interdisciplinary materials to consider the impact of his work upon nineteenth-century views of empire. She situates Southey’s histories, biographies, journalism and epic poetry within their historical and geographical contexts to argue that his widely transmitted views on leadership, duty and global responsibility constituted a moral imperialism that formed Victorian values.
Sample pages
Readership
Literature, Poetry, Romanticism, Empire Studies
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: ‘Once more I will cry aloud and spare not’: Southey’s Responses to the African Slave Trade
Chapter 2: ‘Taking possession’: Southey’s and Wordsworth’s Romantic America
Chapter 3: ‘Eden’s happy vale’: Romantic Representations of the South Pacific
Chapter 4: Thalaba the Destroyer: Southey’s ‘Arabian Romance’
Chapter 5: The Curse of Kehama: Missionaries, Mythology and Empire
Conclusion
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