The Orient and the Young Romantics

Introduction: from solipsism to Orientalism 1. 'The Book of Fate' and 'The Vice of the East': Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and High Romantic Orientalism Interchapter I. Montesquieu: nature and the Oriental despot 2. Byron's Lament: Lara (1814) and the specter of Orientalism 3. The spirit of Oriental solitude: Shelley's Alastor (1816) and Epipsychidion (1821) Interchapter II. Rousseau's foreigners 4. 'The Great Sandy Desert of Politics': the Orient and solitude in The Revolt of Islam (1818) 5. 'Unperplexing Bliss': the Orient in Keats's Poetics Bibliography.