'Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth'. So Roderick Cavaliero introduces the nineteenth-century European Romantic obsession with the Orient. Cavaliero brings on a rich cast of leading Romantic writers, artists, musicians and travellers, including Beckford, Byron,…
The overarching myth was that of the Ottoman Empire, a huge and exotic superpower, an empire to rival Rome, a major threat to Europe, with an invincible military record ruled by a Sultan with absolute, even feckless, power of life and death over his subjects who lived to ̀delight…
Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth. So Roderick Cavaliero introduces the nineteenth-century European Romantic obsession with the Orient. Cavaliero brings on a rich cast of leading Romantic writers, artists, musicians and travellers, including Beckford, Byron, S…