Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter [Hardcover]

In a fresh investigation of primary sources and original readings, Kitson traces the origins of contemporary ideas about race though a variety of late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth century literary texts by Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, De Quincey, and other published and unpublished writings about travel and exploration and natural history.Race and Romanticism the Current Debate The Race Idea Romantic Anatomies of Race Romantic Cannibalism Eating People in the South Seas Slavery: Abolitionist Writing Romantic Sinopolitans: Travellers, Diplomats and Khans Tartars, Mongols, Manchus and Chinese

'This, then, is an enlightening but saddening study of humanity's continuing struggle to comprehend and accept otherness. It adds much to our understanding of the Romantic period and to our grasp of many of the attitudes which still bedevil our relationships with our fellow men.' - Jeff Branch, The Use of English

'One of the strengths of Peter J. Kitson's important study...is that, while giving slavery and abolition due importance, it ranges far beyond them...Kitson's approach throughout is careful and circumspect, and he brings out the complexity and ambivalence of representations of race, as well as showing an awareness of the difficulties of relating colonial practice to metropolitan theory...[it is] the most wide-ranging and authoritative study available of the construction of race in the Romantic period.' British Association for Romantic Studies