Between Imagination And Actuality

Robert Southey is considered not only as a virtuous gentleman who follows thesocial disciplines strictly but also as a successful writer who creates various classicalliterary works. The Curse of Kehama is one of Southey’s epics which covers diversethemes and expresses the poet’s different feelings. In Kehama, Southey intends topresent the exotic Indian culture to his British readers and meanwhile criticize thecruelty and backwardness of Indian politics and religion by writing India from threeaspects. Southey creates various Indian characters, depicts the magnificent palaces ofthe Hindu gods and explains the Hindu religion in his poem. However, the cruelHindu leader, the rebellious country girl, the grand palaces covered with gold andsilver, the cowardly Hindu gods and the bloody religious rituals are not consistentwith the real situation of this oriental country. In actuality, political leaders werepowerless and controlled by the British administrators; women from lower class wereoppressed by both the hierarchal society and colonial force; the palaces of Hindu godswere great but not as luxurious as Southey wrote; the Hindu gods were consideredomnipotent in mythology and savior of men and traditional Hindu wedding ceremonywas like a merry carnival. In Chapter One, the characters both in the poem and theircounterparts in actuality will be presented; Chapter Two shows the differencesbetween scenes in Kehama and actuality; in Chapter Three, the religion will beanalyzed since it appears differently in the poem and actuality. In Chapter Four, thedistortions of the real India in the poem is studied and it is mainly caused by threereasons, respectively Southey’s writing source, his personal standpoints and aestheticpursuit. When writing Kehama, Southey continuously referred to the works of severalorientalists, who had prejudice against India. His personal bias against the Orient andhis ambition of domesticating India was the second reason. Besides, Southey’saesthetic pursuit of imagination also contributed to the distortion.