Orientalism and Romanticism: A historical dialectical relationship

This study is about the relationship between Orientalism and Romanticism. Chapter one reviews the cultural and economic dimensions of Orientalism and develops a historical strategy for investigating the Western portrayal of the Semitic East from the Crusades to the twentieth century.;Chapter two examines Orientalist ideas in major Romantic poems. These poems are Wordsworth's "Book V" of The Prelude, Byron's "Canto V" of Don Juan, Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes, and Scott's "The Crusader Returned." Wordsworth is believed to have read the pre-Islamic Arabic epics, and the Arabian Nights. His admiration of the Arabian Nights derived from its uniqueness and non-Western "spicy" atmosphere, its exoticism, and exceptional flavor. Byron is a prominent Orientalist Romantic poet who often portrays Middle Eastern culture in a negative light. Coleridge is believed to have plagiarized ideas and images from the Arabian Nights. Keats' imagination is drawn to the Middle East as a cheap source of poetic material and a good market place for English industrial production. Scott reconstructs Europe's Medieval past and undermines Islamic culture.;Chapter three studies various Middle Eastern images portrayed in some Romantic novels. The novels studied are Beckford's Vathek, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Scott's The Betrothed and Count Robert of Paris. Beckford lays the foundation stone for a new phase of Orientalism--Romantic Orientalism. In Frankenstein, Shelley proves a clear misunderstanding of the culture of the Middle East and she underestimates the value of the Muslim woman whose image she has taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor. Moreover, Mary Shelley reflects Byronic ideas about the Middle East. Scott reconstructs Europe's history to revive racist ideas--common in the Middle Ages--of the Semitic East.;This study shows that when Romanticism as a literary movement came to life and flourished, Orientalism as a comprehensive European movement was mature and well established; it exerted an insurmountable influence over Romantic writers inside and outside England. The mutual admiration, love, respect and affinity between Romanticism and Orientalism make it impossible to study either of these two historical movements separately, as they have been thoroughly integrated into a historical dialectical relationship.