Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism) by Joey S Kim

About the Book

Confronts the racial and ethnic logics of the Oriental subject undergirding the development of Romantic poetics

Book Synopsis

What happens when we redirect our lines of reading along new lines, borders, and orientations--those that fail to fit neatly into the cardinal directions of North, South, East, and West? What is, who stands for, and where exactly is the "Orient" in British Romantic poetry? To where does the "Orient" lead? Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation responds by tracing shifting orientations--cultural, geographical, aesthetic, racial, and gendered-- through Orientalist sites, subjects, and settings. Kim coins the term "poetics of orientation" to describe a poetics newly aware of cultural difference as a site of aesthetic contestation. She focuses on the contestation that occurs at the site of the lyric subject. A "poetics of orientation", rather than situating the lyric subject in assumed racial whiteness, repositions the lyric subject within discussions of Orientalism and racial formation, tracing the white supremacist logics that have for too long been dismissed as inessential or nonconsequential to Romantic studies.

From the Back Cover

Confronts the racial and ethnic logics of the Oriental subject undergirding the development of Romantic poetics What happens when we redirect our lines of reading along new paths, borders and orientations--those that fail to fit neatly into the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West? In this innovative new study, Joey S. Kim traces shifting orientations - cultural, geographical, aesthetic, racial and gendered - through Orientalist sites, subjects and settings, to offer refreshing insights into the 'Orient' in British Romantic poetry. Examining what the 'Orient' is, where it is, who it stands for and where it leads, she coins the term 'poetics of orientation' to describe a poetics newly aware of cultural difference as a site of aesthetic contestation. Rather than situating the lyric subject in assumed racial whiteness, 'poetics of orientation' repositions the lyric subject within discussions of Orientalism and racial formation, tracing the white supremacist logics that have for too long been dismissed as inessential or nonconsequential to Romantic studies. Joey S. Kim is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. She researches global Anglophone literature with a focus on eighteenth and nineteeth-century poetics and aesthetics.

Review Quotes

With Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation, Joey S. Kim reminds us that we can't begin to understand the Romantics without attending to their eastward gaze, and that the critique of Orientalism is as urgent now as it was in Edward Said's day.--Manu Samriti Chander, Rutgers University

About the Author

Joey S. Kim (she/her) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. She researches global Anglophone literature with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century poetics and aesthetics. She has published work in Essays in Romanticism, Keats-Shelley Journal, Keats-Shelley Review, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, American Periodicals, the LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. A poet as well as a literary critic, her award-winning first book of poems, Body Facts, was released in 2021. www.joeyskim.com Twitter: @joeykim