English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, 19th Century British History - Victorian Era (1837-1901), Europe - Civilization, Great Britain - General & Miscellaneous Histo
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Overview
Throughout the nineteenth century, while Britons were taking their culture to the East, they were also bringing back exotic commodities and ideas, inviting the Orient to enter English terrain, bodies, and consciousness. This mixing is both mediated and mirrored by opium, an Oriental commodity that enters and alters the English body and mindset, thus confusing the direction of Anglo-Oriental power dynamics. Incorporating elements of literary criticism, cultural studies, and social history, Pleasures and Pains takes a new look at the complicated dynamics of empire as well as the development of still-prevalent perceptions of drugs as alien invaders responsible for the decay of national character.Editorials
Booknews
At once a lucrative commodity of Britain's 19th century empire in the East and disturbingly corrosive of her national and cultural identity, opium provided British writers with a focus for representing the anxieties and exhilarations of Otherness. Milligan examines this turmoil in the work of British writers from Coleridge and De Quincey to Oscar Wilde and Conan Doyle. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
June 1, 1995
Publisher
Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Pages
156
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780813915715