The Pre-Raphaelites and Orientalism: language and cognition in remediations of the East

Abstract

'The Pre-Raphaelites and Orientalism' redefines the task of interpreting the East in the late nineteenth century. It takes as a starting point Edward Said's 'Orientalism' (1978) in order to investigate the latent and manifest traces of the East in Pre-Raphaelite literature and culture. As Eleonora Sasso demonstrates, the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates appeared to be the most eligible representatives of a profoundly conservative manifestation of the Orient, of its mystic aura, criminal underworld, and feminine sensuality, or to put it into Arabic terms, of its aja'ib (marvels), mutalibun (treasure-hunters) and hur al-ayn (femmes fatales). By combining together Western and Oriental modes of art, this study fills a gap in Pre-Raphaelite and Oriental studies.

Contents

Series Editor's Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter 1 '[S]elling old lamps for new ones': D.G. Rossetti's Restructuring of Oriental Schemas; Chapter 2 Toward a Corporeal Orientalism: Foregrounding Arabian Erotic Figures in Algernon Swinburne and Aubrey Beardsley; Chapter 3 The Cognitive Process of Parable: John Ruskin, William Morris and the Oriental Lure of the Forbidden; Chapter 4 Consumers of Intoxicating Fruits and Elixirs: The Cognitive Grammar of Christina Rossetti's and Ford Madox Ford's Oriental Fairy Tales; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.