Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T10:01:21.623Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TENNYSON, ARNOLD, AND THE WEALTH OF THE EAST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2004

Emily A. Haddad
Emily A. Haddad
Affiliation:
University of South Dakota
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is not indeed necessary to own a country in order to do trade with it or invest capital in it.—J. A. Hobson, 1902 WHEN WE EXAMINE Alfred Tennyson's and Matthew Arnold's poetic depictions of the wealth of the East, we find that most poems respond to one of two impulses. Some poems seem motivated mainly by the same classic orientalism that is exemplified by those poems of the Romantic period that represent the East as a world apart, untouched by time. But Arnold and Tennyson also wrote poems driven more by the imperialist currents that strengthened throughout the Victorian period; these poems show the East becoming increasingly assimilated into the very modern world of commerce within the British imperial system. In their poems on Eastern wealth, then, Arnold and Tennyson seem not only to be working through their inheritance from Romanticism (specifically, Romantic orientalism), but also to be negotiating between more traditional notions of value and those specific to the developing political and economic systems of the Victorian age. Ultimately, these poems' conception of the wealth of the East is at least consistent with, if not also implicated in, the conflicted evolution of imperialist ideology.

Type
WORK IN PROGRESS
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , September 2004 , pp. 373 - 391
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong Isobel. 1993. Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics. London: Routledge
Arnold Matthew. 1979. The Poems of Matthew Arnold. Ed. Kenneth Allott and Miriam Allott. New York: Longman
Austin Linda M. 1991. The Practical Ruskin: Economics and Audience in the Late Work. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP
Brantlinger Patrick. 1996. Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694–1994. Ithaca: Cornell UP
Brown Susan. 1993. “‘Money is Virtue’: Sexual and Economic Exchange in Mid-Victorian Literary Discourse.” Literature and Money. Ed. Anthony Purdy. Amsterdam: Rodopi 79– 104.
Burnes Alexander. 1973. Travels into Bokhara, Together with a Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus. 1834. London: Oxford UP
Byron George Gordon, Lord. 1996. Selected Poems. London: Penguin
Cain P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. 1993. British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–1914. London: Longman
Coleridge Samuel Taylor. 1985. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. H. J. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford UP
Darby Phillip. 1987. Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American Approaches to Asia and Africa, 1870–1970. New Haven: Yale UP
Davis Lance E., and Robert A. Huttenback, with the assistance of Susan Gray Davis. 1988. Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Economics of British Imperialism. Abr. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
Doyle Michael W. 1986. Empires. Ithaca: Cornell UP
Fieldhouse D. K. 1973. Economics and Empire, 1830–1914. Ithaca: Cornell UP
Gallagher Catherine. 1984: “The Politics of Culture and the Debate over Representation.” Representations 5 115– 47.Google Scholar
Gorman Dan. 1998: “‘The Character Creed’: How Character Shaped the British Imperial Enterprise.” Australasian Victorian Studies Journal 4 127– 40.Google Scholar
Graham Colin. 1998. Ideologies of Epic: Nation, Empire and Victorian Epic Poetry. Manchester: Manchester UP
Harrison Antony H. 1998. Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture: Discourse and Ideology. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia
Haupert Michael J. 1994. “Determining Efficient Property Rights Systems for Money.” Money: Lure, Lore, and Literature. Ed. John Louis DiGaetani. Westport: Greenwood P
Hobson J. A. 1971. Imperialism: A Study. 1902. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P
Kaul Suvir. 2000. Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia
Kiernan Victor. 1982. “Tennyson, King Arthur and Imperialism.” Culture, Ideology and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm. Ed. Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman Jones. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Klaver Claudia. 1993. “Revaluing Money: Dombey and Son's Moral Critique.” Literature and Money. Ed. Anthony Purdy. Amsterdam: Rodopi 105– 36.
La Blanc Gregory P. 2000: “Economic and Literary History: An Economist's Perspective.” New Literary History 31. 2 355– 77.Google Scholar
Lane Edward W. The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 1836. London: J. M. Dent, n.d.
Lane Edward W., trans. 1841. The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, In England, The Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1838–40. Vol. 1. London: Charles Knight
Makdisi Saree. 1998. Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
1837 Rev. of The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, by Edward W. Lane. Quarterly Review 59 (July): 165– 203.
McBratney John. 1993: “Rebuilding Akbar's ‘Fane’: Tennyson's Reclamation of the East.” Victorian Poetry 31. 4 411– 17.Google Scholar
McLaughlin Kevin. 1996: “The Financial Imp: Ethics and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction.” Novel 29. 2 165– 83.Google Scholar
Moore Thomas. 1884. The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. New York: A. C. Armstrong
Osterhammel Jürgen. 1997. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. 1995. Trans. Shelley L. Frisch. Princeton: Markus Wiener
Pecora Vincent. 1998: “Arnoldian Ethnology.” Victorian Studies 41. 3 355– 79.Google Scholar
Richards Thomas. 1993. The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire. London: Verso
Schoenhof J. 1896. A History of Money and Prices. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Sen Sunanda. 1992. Colonies and the Empire: India, 1890–1914. Calcutta: Orient Longman
Shaw Marion. 1994: “Tennyson's Dark Continent.” Victorian Poetry 32. 2 157– 69.Google Scholar
Shell Marc. 1978. The Economy of Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP
Shelley Percy Bysshe. 1927. The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner's
Smith Adam. 1937. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Ed. Edwin Cannan. New York: Modern Library
Southey Robert. 1846. The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey, LL.D. New York: D. Appleton
Tennyson Alfred, Lord. 1987. The Poems of Tennyson. Ed. Christopher Ricks. 3 vols. Berkeley: U of California P
Thompson James. 1996. Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel. Durham: Duke UP
Thomson James. 1965. Poetical Works. Ed. J. Logie Robertson. London: Oxford UP
Rev. of Travels into Bokhara, by Alexander Burnes. Quarterly Review 52 (Nov. 1834): 367– 406.
Trotter David. 1988: “Gold Standards: Money in Edwardian Fiction.” Critical Quarterly 30. 1 22– 35.Google Scholar
Watts Cedric. 1990. Literature and Money: Financial Myth and Literary Truth. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf