The White Man's Burdens

An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire

Chris Brooks, Peter Faulkner (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

406 Seiten

1996
University of Exeter Press (Verlag)
978-0-85989-450-0 (ISBN)

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In 1898, notoriously, Kipling urged the imperialist nations to 'Take up the White Man's Burden' the following year, in Satan Absolved, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt angrily replied, 'The White Man's Burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash'. Such ideological conflicts - and a whole range of intermediate positions - feature in much of the poetry British writers produced about the British Empire over the four centuries of its rise and fall. The discourses of postcolonialism have drawn attention to the major and continuing significance of the cultural products of the period of Western imperialism. But, so far, they have concentrated largely upon fiction and upon the writings and experiences of those parts of the world that were subject to colonialism and imperialist oppression.

For the first time, The White Man's Burdens offers a cross-section of British poetry in which the Empire was the burden of the song. The material, much of it previously uncollected, is drawn from a broad cultural spectrum that includes narrative poetry, heroic verse, patriotic ballads, music hall monologues, and poems from Punch. A substantial Introduction sets the poems in the context of the economic, political, and ideological development of British imperial rule, and headnotes historicize the poems themselves, which are presented chronologically - from George Chapman's 'De Guiana: Carmen Epicum' of 1596 to Fred D'Aguiar's 'At the Grave of the Unknown African' of 1993.

The result is a poetic summary of the changing attitudes of an imperialist nation to its own imperialism, attitudes which range from jingoism and racism, through religious idealism and liberal anxiety, to outright disgust at the whole enterprise.

Peter Faulkner is Reader in Modern English Literature, University of Exeter. He is currently editor of the Journal of the William Morris Society. The late Chris Brooks was Senior Lecturer in Victorian Studies, University of Exeter. He was also national Chair of the Victorian Society and a Trustee of the Albert Memorial.

Contents: Part 1 16th century: George Chapman. Part 2 17th century: Michael Drayton; Andrew Marvell; John Dryden; Aphra Behn. Part 3 18th century: Daniel Defoe; Alexander Pope; George Berkeley; Frances Seymour; James Thomson; David Garrick; Thomas Morris; James Grainger; Anne Penny; Phillis Wheatley; Anna Seward; James Freeth; George Dallas; William Cowper; Hannah More; William Blake; Erasmus Darwin; Robert Shouthey; William Shepherd. Part 4 19th century: Thomas Campbell; William Wordsworth; James Montgomery; Charles Lamb; Felicia Hemans; Reginald Heber; Thomas Hood; Alfred Tennyson; Samuel Rogers; George Beard; Richard Chevenix Trench; Eliza Cook; John Sheehan; Arthur Hugh Clough; Charles Mackay; Christina Rossetti; Aldred Comyns Lyall; Gerald Massey; William Allingham; Francis Hastings Doyle; Charles Kingsley; "Aliph Cheem" (Walter Yeldham); William Rossetti; William McGonagall; Wilfred Scawen Blunt; Douglas Sladen; George Robert Sims; Alfred Austin; George MacDonald; Rudyard Kipling; Lewis Morris; William Watson; Sarah Geraldine Stock; William Ernest Henley; Owen Seaman; Henry Newbold; Hilaire Belloc; Robert Williams Buchanan; Thomas Hardy; Algernon Charles Swinburne. Part 5 20th century: Henry Newbolt; A.E. Housman; Arthur Christopher Benson; Francis Thompson; Alfred Noyes; John Milton Hayes; Harwood Steele; Lawrence Eastwood; Billy Bennett; Alan Sanders; Noel Coward; John Masefield; W.H. Auden; Stevie Smith; Philip Larkin; Jon Stallworthy; Fred D'Aguiar.

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.9.1996
Verlagsort	Exeter
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
ISBN-10	0-85989-450-9 / 0859894509
ISBN-13	978-0-85989-450-0 / 9780859894500
Zustand	Neuware