Romantic Orientalism Written by: Doaa Alaa Hashem MA Student Supervised by: Prof. Dr.

Samira Basta Faculty of Arts - English Department Ain Shams University

Romantic Orientalism Orient, meaning the East, is juxtaposed to Occident, the West. Orientalism is a system of thoughts, beliefs, theories, and discourses propagated by Western scholars about the East, including Middle East as well as Asia. [It] describes the representation and the construction of the East in the imagination of the West. The East is the other to the West. Orientalism dates back to the 19th century, when Orientalists translated the writings of the Orient into English. These writings were deemed as necessary knowledge for the domination and the colonization of the East. It was thought that the knowledge about the Orient would assist the imperial and colonial project of the West. In this sense, the Orient was traditionally the passive object for study by Orientalists, while some scholars in the area attempted to offer a different voice. In his book, Orientalism, Edward Said deconstructs the system of orientalism. Said argues that Western scholars, with Eurocentric prejudice, misrepresent the Middle East and Islam. Western thought sustained a history of false representation and romanticized the image of Arab- Islamic peoples and their culture. Until recently, this long history of romanticization and misrepresentation of the East justified the colonization and the domination of the East. The concept of Orientalism continues to be important in contemporary neocolonial and postcolonial context. (Cheng)(1) "Romantic Orientalism" .. [or] "Oriental exoticism" or "Oriental fantasy" brings together two concepts... "Romantic[ism]" refers to the writers and the ideas and culture they reflect)of the Romantic Period[&] "Orientalism" refers to the geography and culture of large parts of Asia and North Africa, plus some of what we now think of as Eastern Europe. Romantic Orientalism is the recurrence of recognizable elements of Asian and African place names, historical and legendary people, religions, philosophies, art, architecture, interior decoration, costume, and the like in the writings of the .. Romantics. Romantic literature [abounds in oriental motifs] a tiger decidedly not indigenous to the British Isles in one of Blake's most famous songs; an impressive dream of "an Arab of the Bedouin Tribes" in book 5 of Wordsworth's Prelude; the founder of the Mongol dynasty in China as well as an Abyssinian "damsel with a dulcimer" in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"; Eastern plots, characters, and themes in Byron's "Oriental tales," some of which show up later in Don Juan Romantic Orientalism.. parallel[s] another component of Romanticism.. "Literary Gothicism." Pleasurable terror and pleasurable exoticism are kindred experiences, with unreality and strangeness at the root of both. Before the publication of Edward Said's ..Orientalism (1978),

scholars tended to view the Eastern places, characters, and events pervading late-eighteenthand early-nineteenth-century British literature as little more than stimuli for easy thrills. But this attitude has changed dramatically The Romantic Period in Britain is now recognized as a time of global travel and exploration, accession of colonies all over the world, and development of imperialist ideologies that rationalized the British takeover of distant territories. Such re-contextualizing of Romantic Orientalism gives it a decidedly contemporary and political character involving questions of national identity, cultural difference, the morality of imperialist domination, and consequent anxiety and guilt concerning such issues The European Romantic imagination was saturated with Orientalism, but it reflected persistent ambivalence concerning the East, complicated in Britain by colonial anxiety and imperial guilt.(2) William Blake subtle treatment of the oriental "other" in his poem "The Little Black Boy" from "Songs of Innocence" & "The Tyger" from "Songs of Experience" shows the conflict between his feelings of superiority as a White British Man & his guilt & awareness that his country's colonial policy is really victimizing people who has as much right to freedom & ruling their own countries as himself. In "The Little Black Boy", Blake keeps shifting between considering the black race; "The Other" as evil opposed to the "goodness" of the white race; "Western Man" & the belief that race or the colour of skin doesn't indicate whether the heart is god or bad. The narrator, the little black boy says "And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child". The "white child" is likened to "an angel" to indicate the goodness & purity of the white western man. However, the black child has a "white soul", so he is good. Again goodness is indicated by the color "white", so may be the black boy has a good soul but a bad body. This idea is further stressed later in the third stanza when the boy states that "And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face; Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove." The boy's black body is but a cloud that he'll be free of when his soul meets God in Heaven. However, Blake's conflict between the innocent black child's belief in equality & the his own belief in the western man's superiority shows in the boy's explanation "to his white friend that they are equals, but that neither will be truly free until they are released from the constraints of [their respective black & white bodies]. He imagines himself shading his friend from the brightness of Gods love until he can become accustomed to it. This statement implies that the black boy is better prepared for heaven than the white boy, perhaps because of the greater burden of his dark skin has posed during earthly life. This is part of the consoling vision with which his

mother has prepared him, which allows his suffering to become a source of pride rather than shame". (3) In "The Tyger", Blake begins by awed admiration of the "other" represented by the tiger. The phrase: "thy fearful symmetry?" represents the other as "fearful", despite his "symmetry". Each subsequent stanza contains further questions. From what part of the cosmos could the tigers fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to twist the sinews of the tigers heart? How, once that horrible heart began to beat, its creator had the courage to continue the job. All these questions express fear of the other, as if this was Blake's excuse to accept conquering & colonizing the east, as a protection against what this fearful "other" might do to endanger the sane normal west. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and the smith who could have wielded them. And when the job was done, the speaker wonders, how would the creator have felt? "Did he smile his work to see?; Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Blake clearly considers the East as an artificial creation wielded by fire & anvil as compared to the natural innocent western "lamb" who needs to defend himself against the eastern "Tyger".

Works cited: 1. Cheng, Shu-Ju Ada. "Orientalism." Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Ed. Richard T. Schaefer. Pub. date: 2008 | Online Pub. Date: April 25, 2008 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963879 | Print ISBN: 9781412926942 | Online ISBN: 9781412963879 | Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc. http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/ethnicity/n409.xml http://www.sagepub.com/ritzerintro/study/materials/reference/77708_9.2ref.pdf 2. The Norton Anthology of English Literature http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_4/ 3. SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Songs of Innocence and Experience. SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.