Microsoft Word Materiallar Full

II INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE OF YOUNG RESEARCHERS 

365 

 Qafqaz University                         

          18-19 April 2014, Baku, Azerbaijan 

ORIENTALISM IN ENGLISH VERSE 

 

Ilaha KHANALIYEVA 

Qafqaz University 

[e-mail] 

 

Academic attempt to discuss "Orientalism" in English literature is bound to start with a confutation of the definition 

made popular by Edward Said in his book, Orientalism (1977). Interest about Orientalism developed with the several 

translations and subsequent publications of some of the most popular Oriental tales in the eighteenth and nineteenth 

centuries. This study aims to present within brief compass the general character of the Oriental diction and the Oriental 

theme in English verse between 1740 and 1840. 

The poets sometimes take into consideration "The Orient" or "The East" as a unit, without particular boundaries. 

Again, Asia or Africa is often presented as a unit, in a single thought or image. Sometimes Oriental reference is made in 

very incomprehensible manner, without any specific geographical term or terms. Yet in the body of verse as a whole, the 

reader is not left without abundant, if scarcely coherent, details in the poetical map of the East. 

The further story of Orientalism in English verse from 1840 to the present time is a long one, which cannot even be 

outlined here. It interpolates many poets, many themes, and many moods. James Thomson, like George Gordon Byron and 

Crabbe and Wordsworth in our period, like Tennyson, was influenced by his early reading of Arabian Nights. Orientalism in 

English verse appears in the word, the phrase, thepassage, the poem, and group of poems. I am intended to discuss this unit 

extensively.  

The passage varies in length from one line to a hundred lines ormore. As a matter of significance in the history of 

English poetry,Orientalism is concerned in large part with these thousands ofpassages, of varied tone, on varied themes, 

scattered through themost diverse poems by poets of widely different schools, fromChaucer to Kipling. 

The Oriental poem, as we have mentioned, may occasionally be written in Greek or Latin; but such poems are rare. In 

length it varies from a few lines to epic proportions. Montgomery's Parrot contains only thirty-three words; his Pelican and 

Ostrich  being slightly longer. Jones' To Lady Jones contains less than one hundred words. There may perhaps be some 

epigrams or epitaphs of couplet length that could be called Oriental, but they do not seem at all frequent. Oriental verse of 

other poets includes perhaps Southey. All of the poets after the Lyrical Ballads, with few exceptions, were interested in 

experiments in English verse, and Southey carried into the composition of The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba a definite 

purpose to embody his Orientalism in appropriate versification. To say the least, Oriental verse from Jones to Mangan 

showed the general tendency to substitute anything and everything for the conventional heroic couplet. 

The titles of some of poems are flat or without specific Oriental quality. On the other hand, one has only to remember 

Lalla Rookh, The Curse of Kehama, Kubla Khan, Asia, as well as among poems of minor fame, Juggernaut, Palmyra, The 

Caravanin the Desert, and a host of others. The Wail of the Three Khalendeers seems as good as Mandalay. If one wishes 

something in lighter vein, he may choose The King of the Crocodiles, from Southey; or Fm Going to Bombay, and  The 

Kangaroos: A Fable, from Hood. 

A complete account of the Oriental drama from 1740 to 1840 would require a separate paper. The type is as old as the 

Elizabethan era, and there are signs of it in the medieval epoch. Oriental plays of the same general character as those of the 

Restoration period continued to be produced in England until the Romantic Movement was triumphant.  

Real translation of Oriental poems is found in Mrs. Montagu with the aid of other wits and in Jones. Pseudo-translation 

and paraphrase seem far more characteristic of the English Orientalism of the eighteenth century. It is the period of 

Chatterton, Ireland, and Macpherson. 

The setting of the Oriental poem is as various as its form or theme. It may appear in a real letter (Mrs. Montagu), in an 

essay (Jones), in prose fiction (Mrs. Radcliffe and Walter Scott), or in a prose frame (Lalla Rookh). As a lyric it appears in 

the long narrative poem, Childe Harold, for example; or in the drama, The Bride, for example. It can be found as a member 

of a group of Oriental poems.