Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Universal Empire
- 2 Home imperial: Wordsworth's London and the spot of time
- 3 Wordsworth and the image of Nature
- 4 Waverley and the cultural politics of dispossession
- 5 Domesticating exoticism: transformations of Britain's Orient, 1785–1835
- 6 Beyond the realm of dreams: Byron, Shelley, and the East
- 7 William Blake and the Universal Empire
- 8 Conclusions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
8 - Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Universal Empire
- 2 Home imperial: Wordsworth's London and the spot of time
- 3 Wordsworth and the image of Nature
- 4 Waverley and the cultural politics of dispossession
- 5 Domesticating exoticism: transformations of Britain's Orient, 1785–1835
- 6 Beyond the realm of dreams: Byron, Shelley, and the East
- 7 William Blake and the Universal Empire
- 8 Conclusions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM
Summary
Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantification which results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies. Their first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together – that is to say the exploitation of the native by the settler – was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannons. The settler and the native are old acquaintances. In fact, the settler is right when he speaks of knowing “them” well. For it is the settler who has brought the native into existence and who perpetuates his existence.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the EarthAs an overall cultural moment, the romantic period in Britain was characterized by, on the one hand, a sense of suspension, transition, disruption; and, on the other, by a vast and momentous acceleration, by a sense of crisis and catastrophe, as though a sudden and permanent break with the past were being experienced, and a whole new world of hitherto unimaginable possibilities opened up on what would literally be – for the first time – a planetary scale. We are now in a position to evaluate some of the signal political and economic changes in terms of the broader cultural development of modernization.
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- Chapter
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- Romantic ImperialismUniversal Empire and the Culture of Modernity, pp. 173 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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