The Pre-Raphaelites and Orientalism

Abstract

The book redefines the task of interpreting the East in the late nineteenth century, weaving together literary, linguistic, and cognitive analyses of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, illustrations and writings. 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 the book 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. As readers of Edward Lane’s and Richard F. Burton’s translations of the Arabian Nights, John Ruskin, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Algernon Swinburne, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ford Madox Ford were deeply affected by the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba (and the less known Hasan, Anime, and Parisad), whose parables of magic, adventure and love seem to be haunting their Pre-Raphaelite imagination. Through cognitive linguistics and its wide range of approaches (conceptual metaphors, scripts and schemas, prominence, figure, ground, parables, prototypes, deixis and text world theory), which provide an illuminating framework for discussing the blend of East and West in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, illustrations and writings, this book demonstrates how Ruskin, the Rossetti brothers, Morris, Swinburne, Beardsley and Ford took property from the stories of the Arabian Nights and reused them in another remediations.

Decadent women poets: translingual thresholds

“…As Sasso points out, "the goblins selling fruits to Lizzie and assaulting her with animal-like violence seem to recall the Oriental merchants in the Arabian Nights." 76 Naidu's poem by contrast turns the market into the daily life of any Indian city. Instead of a life being sequestered by the enticing, luxurious wares of the East, in Rossetti's famous "Come buy, come buy," ( "Our grapes fresh from the vine/ Pomegranates full and fine,/ Dates and sharp bullaces/… Figs to fill your mouth/ Citrons from the South), Naidu paints a working day of laborers that never stop.…”