Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation

• Demonstrates how the construction of the modern lyric subject germinated during the Romantic period through the creation and invention of the “Oriental” subject
• It analyses works by Romantic-era authors, including William Jones, Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, William Blake and Phillis Wheatley
• Uses the concepts of “orientations” and “Orient” to provide fresh readings of British Romantic poetry

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.