Romantic Literature, Race, And Colonial Encounter

Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter is a study of the origin, growth, and development of "the race idea" and its impact on the writing of the Romantic period. It discusses how race as a concept became increasingly important in defining difference and identity in Romantic period culture. Subjects including slavery, natural history, comparative anatomy, missionary, diplomatic, and travel writing are explored and texts by Coleridge, De Quincey, Mary Shelley, Byron, Equiano, and others are situated in the complex and shifting discourse of Romantic theories of race. In particular, Romantic representations of China and the “Far East” are discussed as a key site where the period’s changing attitudes to human difference and variety were especially prominent.

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and early nineteenth century literary texts by Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, De Quincey, and other published and unpublished writings about travel and exploration and natural history.

Peter J. Kitson is Professor of English at the University of Dundee. He is the author (with Tim Fulford and Debbie Lee) of Literature, Science and Exploration: Bodies of Knowledge (2004); the editor (with Tim Fulford) of the eight volume editions, Travels, Explorations and Empires, 1770-1830 (2001-3); and (with Debbie Lee) of the eight volume edition of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings from the British Romantic Period (1999). Kitson has served as the Chair of the English Association and is the current President (2007-2010). He is also the President of the British Association for Romantic Studies.