Lecture 1999-03-15 

Projections on the Map: Romantic Constructions of the Orient

Professor Stephen Prickett

Was Coleridge's Ancient Mariner enlightened or crippled by his experiences in the Pacific?  Was Kubla Khan a despotic tyrant or a philosopher-king?  Did Europe despise or admire Eastern civilizations during the Romantic period?  Dr. Stephen Prickett address these questions in a lecture which examines how Europe was both patronizing and self-congratulatory in its depictions of the Orient, while at the same time it made Asian cultures the locus of European myths, hopes and ideals. This polarity was already present in European thought at the end of the eighteenth century, the great age of Pacific exploration.  Dr. Prickett finds that both positions were potent sources of new ideas for European culture, as he examines the influence of the Orient--those lands represented by the fanciful pictures on the margins of old maps- on European Romantic culture.

Dr. Stephen Prickett is Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow.  He has published more than fifty articles and ten books on Romanticism, Victorian Studies and related topics.  Two of his books, Words and the Word, and the Landmarks Bible, have been translated into Japanese. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1968.

Edited from material submitted by Dr. Joshua Dale.