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Informationen zum Autor Roderick Cavaliero is a writer and historian. He is the author of 'Admiral Satan: The Life and Campaigns of the Bailli de Suffren', 'Independence of Brazil' and 'Strangers in the Land: The Rise and Decline of the British Indian Empire' (all I.B.Tauris) as well as 'Last of the Crusaders: The Knights of St John','Malta in the Eighteenth Century' and 'Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom' (Tauris Parke Paperbacks). Klappentext Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth'. So Roderick Cavaliero introduces the European Romantic obsession with the Orient.Cavaliero draws on a life-time's research in Romantic literature and introduces a rich cast of leading Romantic writers,artists,musicians and travellers,including Beckford,Byron, Shelley,Walter Scott,Pierre Loti,Thomas Moore,Rossini,Eugene Delacroix,Thackeray and Disraeli,and a host of other Romantics,who were drawn to the Orient in the 18th and 19th centuries.They luxuriate in its exotic sights,sounds,literature and,above all, in the prevailing mythology.Cavaliero analyses the Romantic vision where,as Byron writes, there are 'virgins soft as the roses they twine',but lays bare an underlying vision of cruelty and oppression, and of societies based on domestic or prisoner slavery - anathema to the 19th-century Romantic. The overarching myth was that of the Ottoman Empire,a huge and exotic superpower,an empire to rival Rome,a major threat to Europe, with an invincible military record ruled by a Sultan with absolute, even feckless, power of life and death over his subjects who lived to 'delight his senses'.But to the Romantics,fear of the absolute ruler was overlaid by frissons of oriental luxury. Thus the Ottoman Sultans were the heirs of the iconic Caliphate of Harun ar Rashid in the fabulous Arabian Nights Entertainments.Coleridge's dream of the Orient in Kubla Khan was not of the barbaric grandeur of the global Mongol empire but that of a 'stately pleasure dome in Xanadu' among incense-bearing trees and untroubled forests. Moore's Lalla Rookh was set in his visionary vale of Kashmir and is a love story in 'a land of kingfishers and golden orioles' with the backdrop of the mighty Moghul Empire. Scott was obsessed by the chivalry of the Crusades on both sides and Disraeli was fascinated by the interplay of the Abrahamic faiths and the hopes of peace in the Holy Land. Dualism runs through Romantic writing even when European realpolitik and modern nationalism are involved - as in the Greek revolt against Ottoman rule and the decline of Turkey as a great power. But above all for the Romantics the Orient remained mysterious and inviting. Cavaliero's Ottomania will delight all readers interested in tales of the exotic Orient, and the literature of the Romantic movement - a rich treasure-house of poets, novelists and travellers. Vorwort 'Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth'. This book analyses the Romantic vision of the Orient from Ottoman Turkey, through the Middle East, including Egypt and Persia, to the Vale of Kashmir - fascination with the exotic Orient mixed with distaste for despotic rule. Zusammenfassung 'Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth'. This book analyses the Romantic vision of the Orient from Ottoman Turkey, through the Middle East, including Egypt and Persia, to the Vale of Kashmir - fascination with the exotic Orient mixed with distaste for despotic rule. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction 1 The Empire of Osman The Ottoman reality 2 The Sultan in his Seraglio The myth of the despot 3 The Harem The myth of sex 4 Exotic and Erotic The myth of the Arabian Nights 5 Peri and Prisoner The myth of the Bagno 6 Look upon my works ye mighty and despair The myth of Egypt 7 Virgins soft as roses The myth of Lord Byron 8 Ghastly as a tyrant's dream The myth of resurgent Greece 9 Barbering and shaving The myth of Persia 10 ...
