num_pages: 148
description: Widely read in the age of British imperialism and still popular today, the five writers studied here have allowed millions to participate vicariously in the imperial project. Yet all of these writers, so instrumental in popularising the imperial agenda of power and dominance, bore deep emotional scars and as adults bolstered their fragile psychic states through fantasies of empire. While soldiers and politicians may know to bury or at least camouflage their fears and desires, inner fantasy is the necessary ingredient of literature, and popular fiction often offers the opportunity to probe the mind of an age. The connection between childhood loss and the desire for imperial escape, power and dominance is illuminated by De Quincey's mad screeds against the Chinese as both terrifyingly powerful and laughably weak, while Stevenson's romances, though written from an invalid's bed, are credited with 'selling' the idea of empire as manly adventure. Conan Doyle's tales of a Britainmenaced at home by imperi
language: English
title: Narcissism of Empire: Loss, Rage and Revenge in the Works of Thomas De Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Isak Dinesen
titlecomplete: Narcissism of Empire: Loss, Rage and Revenge in the Works of Thomas De Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Isak Dinesen
ratings_count: 3
publisher: Liverpool University Press