The Bloomsbury Handbook of Romanticism in Britain and Asia

The first handbook to survey the literary and cultural aspects of the relationship between British Romantic writing and South, Southeast and East Asia, focusing on India and China, from leading international scholars in the field.

The first comprehensive overview and survey of the emerging subject of British Romanticism and Asia, this book goes beyond the familiar focus on British and European national cultures of Romanticism, showing how romantic period writing is a truly international and global body of work characterised by styles, subjects, and approaches transcending and transgressing familiar borders.

Over the last few decades, Romantic period studies have largely been transformed by studies of travel, exploration, diaspora, race, gender, slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and intercultural encounters and exchanges. New and revisionist studies of British colonialism and imperialism have now situated the study of British Romanticism securely within a global context. The impact of this globalized concern has re-energised interest in the mature fields of Romantic Orientalism and its representations of the 'East' and the long-standing study intercultural encounters.

Featuring essays from the field's foremost international scholars, this volume offers a crucial guide to the contexts, fiction, poetry, drama, translation, and autobiographical writing produced between c.1760 and c.1842 concerning Asian subjects and interests, not only surveying current trends in scholarship but also opening new areas of scholarly debate through the examination of under-researched material.