Abstract

In Chapter 1, Introduction: Ruining Oppositions, Orientalism, and the Constructions of Empire in British Romanticism, I examine the popular genre of the oriental tale in relation to the social, political, and literary context of British Romanticism. As the discursive, domestic counterparts to political and economic imperialism, these oriental tales translate local issues into orientalism's international frame. I focus on writers who are "other" to the British Empire's dominant power-holders through their religion, gender, nationality and/or sexuality and examine their implications for orientalism and British Romanticism. ;In Chapter 2, 'This fancied harem was only a study:' Sydney Owenson and Orientalism, Irish-Anglo Sydney Owenson's The Missionary: An Indian Tale and The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale exemplify the politicized oriental tale. The acts of conversion attempted by each of these novels partake of the orientalist's strategies. The feminine's role in these conversions determines their success or failure, because of the alliance between the feminine, orientalism and nationalism. ;Chapter 3, Orientalism Ventriloquized: Elizabeth Hamilton's Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, presents the tangled and almost contradictory relationship between what I term Elizabeth Hamilton's orientalism and her feminism. I examine the paradox of this novel, which mingles Hamilton's feminist stance on women's education with orientalist descriptions of Hindu culture and supports the British colonization of India. ;In Chapter 4, Thomas Moore and the Territory of Orientalism, I read Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance, which demonstrates Ireland's multivalent position as western colony and orientalism's uses both for and against Irish liberation. Moore's relationship with Lord Byron suggests the delicacy required of two friends challenging each other for the same literary territory. ;In Chapter 5, Byron and the Ruins of Orientalism, I extend current discussions of the Byronic hero and heroine to account for orientalism's role in The Giaour, The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos and Lara. Byron's unique position as a writer who travelled in the areas he depicts, and as a bisexual potentially subject to exile or execution, raises issues of class and sexuality. Like the other writers in my dissertation, Byron represents the Romantic use of orientalism in its multiple appropriations, permutations and implications