摘要:Paradoxically, that which reveals itself as most ‘other’ to him is still ironically the origin of his own self. De Quincey’s conceptualised Orient is thus rendered useless as he accepts that the West always was the East to begin with, and that any argument to the contrary is a futile one.
ng of the Orient; hoping that through the ‘milk of Paradise’ the speaker may be able to transcend to a state in which he may ‘build that dome in the air’. However, his ascension to God-like status, he believes, may make others treat him as unholy, perhaps with ‘holy dread’:
‘And all should cry, Beware! Beware! / His flashing eyes, his floating hair! / Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread’.
The use of the oxymoronic phrase ‘holy dread’ reiterates Coleridge’s own pleasure against pain contradiction with opium ingestion and Orientalism. Furthermore, it perhaps subtly indicates the approach he believes the imperialistic order of Britain should adopt when attempting to contain those with ‘flashing eyes’.
The ‘plot’ that unravels throughout ‘Kubla Khan’ is one where a powerful Eastern, feminine force penetrates and destroys the flimsy Western, male barriers that enclose it. The implication presented by Coleridge is that these same forces can not only impose themselves on a nation, but on an individual. D. A. Miller identifies the male terror at the prospect of being occupied by the female, arguing that it resembles and inverts a classic rape scenario.
Thus, it strikes a common chord in Coleridge’s own Oriental possession, which is often feminised, invading his body but exerting its own control over it, by nature evoking paradoxical destruction and pleasure within him. Moreover, this ‘inverted rape scenario’ is itself a partial reversal of what Coleridge deemed Britain’s exploitation of the East, and an ironic act of retribution.
It was Coleridge’s foremost concern that this invasion and alteration process went some way into eroding sense of national identity and British culture, a process that he deduced would ultimately blur any distinctions to be made between Britain and the Eastern world, until they eventually merged into one.
Thomas De Quincey’s analyses of the relationship between opium and Orientalism yield conflicting opinions to those formulated by Coleridge. It was De Quincey’s underlying theory that opium acted as a means of excavating the Orient within the British self. He concludes, contrary to Coleridge, that divisions between the East and West never actually existed; the Oriental ‘other’ never facilitated a hostile invasion of body and nation, but was present at conception, and is indeed the origin of all things ‘British’.
In a similar vein to Coleridge, De Quincey condemns the exposure of the ‘other’ within the self, but still paradoxically seeks it by means of opium intake. John Barrell comments that De Quincey identifies the internal manifestation of the Orient within as an infection, and adopts measures to protect him against this. One such method follows the process of inoculation, whereby in taking a piece of the Orient into himself, namely opium, De Quincey hopes to dismiss that which he does not attribute to himself, conceptualising an internal West against East division in terms of what is familiar and what is alien. However, as Barrell suggests, this measure is destined for failure because the subject reinforces the infection by the same means he hope will crush it.
Integral to De Quincey’s musings on Orientalism is the visit of the Malay in ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’. The Malay is depicted in a demonic fash
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