Alimentary Orientalism Britain's literary imagination and the edible East / Yin Yuan.

Author/creator Yuan, Yin
Format Electronic
Publication InfoLewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2023]
Description270 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete
Subjects

Abstract "What, exactly, did tea, sugar, and opium mean in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain? Alimentary Orientalism reassesses the politics of Orientalist representation by examining the contentious debates surrounding these exotic, recently popularized, and literally consumable things. It suggests that the interwoven discourses sparked by these commodities transformed the period's literary Orientalism and created surprisingly self-reflexive ways through which British writers encountered and imagined cultural otherness. Tracing exotic ingestion as a motif across a range of authors and genres, the book considers how, why, and whither writers used scenes of eating, drinking, and smoking to diagnose and interrogate their own solipsistic constructions of the Orient. As national and cultural boundaries became increasingly porous, such self-reflexive inquiries into the nature and role of otherness provided an unexpected avenue for British imperial subjectivity to emerge and coalesce"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
LCCN 2022041603
ISBN9781684484676 (hardback)
ISBN9781684484669 (paperback)
ISBN(epub)
ISBN(pdf)