The Orient and the Young Romantics

Andrew Warren is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He specializes in Romanticism, poetry, philosophy and critical theory.

• Introduction: from solipsism to Orientalism; 1. 'The Book of Fate' and 'The Vice of the East': Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and High Romantic Orientalism; Interchapter I. Montesquieu: nature and the Oriental despot; 2. Byron's Lament: Lara (1814) and the specter of Orientalism; 3. The spirit of Oriental solitude: Shelley's Alastor (1816) and Epipsychidion (1821); Interchapter II. Rousseau's foreigners; 4. 'The Great Sandy Desert of Politics': the Orient and solitude in The Revolt of Islam (1818); 5. 'Unperplexing Bliss': the Orient in Keats's Poetics; Bibliography.

'… this book is a compelling critical achievement in part because it is finely wrought, but also because in it Andrew Warren raises questions about the poetry of the second generation that are very much worth raising and discussing … Warren's study offers us real insight and sustained critical pleasures.' Theresa M. Kelley, Studies in Romanticism