U.S. orientalisms : race, nation, and gender in literature, 1790-1890 / Malini Johar Schueller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schueller, Malini Johar, 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Oriental influences.

American literature.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Asia--In literature.

Asia.

Africa, North--In literature.

Africa, North.

North Africa.

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in literature.

Nationalism in literature.

Imperialism in literature.

Race in literature.

Sex in literature.

Asia--Foreign public opinion, American.

Physical Description:

xii, 248 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [1998]

Summary:

U.S. Orientalisms is the first extensive and politicized study of nineteenth-century American discourses that helped build an idea of nationhood with control over three "Orients": the "Barbary" Orient; the Orient of Egypt; and the Orient of India. The book begins with an examination of the literature of the "Barbary" Orient generated by the U.S.-Algerian conflict in the late eighteenth century in the works of such writers as Royall Tyler, Susanna Rowson, and Washington Irving. It then moves on to the Near East Orientalist literature of the nineteenth century in light of Egyptology, theories of race, and the growth of missionary fervor in writers such as John DeForest, Maria Susanna Cummins, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and Harriet Prescott Spofford. Finally, Schueller considers the Indic Orientalism of the period in the context of Indology, British colonialism, and the push for Asian trade in the United States, focusing particularly on Emerson and Whitman. U.S. Orientalisms demonstrates how these writers strove to create an Orientalism premised on the idea of civilization and empire moving west, from Asia, through Europe, and culminating in the New World.

Contents:

Race(ing) to the Orient

Algerian slavery and the liberty vision : Royall Tyler, James Ellison, Susanna Rowson, Washington Irving, Peter Markoe

Missionary colonialism, Egyptology, racial borderlands, and the satiric impulse : M.M. Ballow, William Ware, John DeForest, Maria Susanna Cummins, David F. Dorr

Subversive orientalisms : Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Herman Melville

The culture of Asian orientalism : missionary writings, travel writings, popular poetry

"Mine Asia" : Emerson's erotics of oriental possession

Whitman, Columbus, and the Asian mother.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-242) and index.

ISBN:

0472108859

OCLC:

37322705