Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture
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Document Type
Book
Description
Throughout the nineteenth century, while Britons were taking their culture to the East, they were also bringing back exotic commodities and ideas, inviting the Orient to enter English terrain, bodies, and consciousness. This mixing is both mediated and mirrored by opium, an Oriental commodity that enters and alters the English body and mindset, thus confusing the direction of Anglo-Oriental power dynamics. Incorporating elements of literary criticism, cultural studies, and social history, Pleasures and Pains takes a new look at the complicated dynamics of empire as well as the development of still-prevalent perceptions of drugs as alien invaders responsible for the decay of national character.
Publication Date
1995
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Publisher
University Press of Virginia
City
Charlottesville
Keywords
Opium, The Orient, Imperialism, National Identity, 19th Century, British Culture
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature
Repository Citation
Milligan , B. (1995). Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia.
