Colonialism Revisited: Reading in Selected Poems of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

     This paper will try to discover and discuss the colonial contentsof some of the nineteenth-century British poets. At that time, the colonial ideology and impetus were increasingly elevated and demanded as the British Empire notably expanded and significantly flourished. Colonialism was among the main aspects in the British political and social life. Literary figures and scholars dealt with thisnewly-born phenomenon differently; some welcomed and adhered it, while others showed some doubts and suspicion. There was no unified thread about the colonial project the Europeans held. Did exist there a kind of consensus? Or was there a sense of ambivalence about it? This paper is going to address these issues and attempt to reach at some plausible answers and results. To do this, the paper will analyze a group of poems by William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Rudyard Kipling.