Romanticism Re-Oriented: Indian Authors and English Literary Culture, 1770-1830

FAIN: FA-58286-15

Humberto Garcia
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN 37203-2416)

Challenging Edward Said's assumption that the way Westerners represent the Occident to themselves is an unmediated reflection that occurred in isolation from non-Westerners, my book project argues that late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Indian authors redefined themselves by promoting a contrasting idea of the west that Britons and Europeans had not yet fully articulated circa 1800. This process of Asian self-definition was culturally mediated through their fusion of the English Oriental tale with Indo-Persian cultural, religious, and literary forms. Occidentalism was therefore not created uniquely in Europe and subsequently imposed elsewhere. In addition to revising postcolonial, eighteenth century, and Romantic literary studies, my project contributes to and benefits from the work of humanities scholars who study historical connections across national, religious, and geographical boundaries, and consider how intermediate brokers reconstituted these boundaries.

Associated Products

“Performing Dispossession: The Indo-Islamic Vernacular Past in Henry Vivian Louis Derozio’s ‘The Ruins of Rajmahal’” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Performing Dispossession: The Indo-Islamic Vernacular Past in Henry Vivian Louis Derozio’s ‘The Ruins of Rajmahal’”
Author: Humberto Garcia
Abstract: na
Date: 10/01/2015
Conference Name: International Conference on Romanticism (Park City, Utah)

“Performing the Indo-Muslim Self: Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin in Late-Eighteenth-Century Theatrical England” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Performing the Indo-Muslim Self: Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin in Late-Eighteenth-Century Theatrical England”
Author: Humberto Garcia
Abstract: na
Date: 10/01/2015
Conference Name: Conference on South Asia (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

“Performing the Indo-Muslim Self: Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin in Late-Eighteenth-Century Theatrical England” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Performing the Indo-Muslim Self: Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin in Late-Eighteenth-Century Theatrical England”
Author: Humberto Garcia
Abstract: na
Date: 2/1/2016
Conference Name: Central European University’s Center for Religious Studies (Budapest, Hungary)

England Re-Oriented: How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857 (Book)
Title: England Re-Oriented: How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857
Author: Humberto Garcia
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/british-history-after-1450/england-re-oriented-how-central-and-south-asian-travelers-imagined-west-17501857?format=PB
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781108797252

---