Pleasures and pains
Subtitle: opium and the Orient in nineteenth-century British culture
By: Barry Milligan.
Series: Victorian literature and culture series
Publisher: University Press of Virginia
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 156
Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Drug addicts' writings -- History and criticism.; Opium abuse -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Authors, English -- 19th century -- Drug use.; English literature -- Asian influences.; Opium abuse in literature.; Exoticism in literature.; Great Britain -- Civilization -- Oriental influences.; Great Britain -- Civilization -- 19th century.; Orient -- In literature.
Description: Throughout the nineteenth century, while Britons were taking their culture to the East, they were also bringing back exotic commodities and ideas, inviting the Orient to enter English terrain, bodies, and consciousness. This mixing is both mediated and mirrored by opium, an Oriental commodity that enters and alters the English body and mindset, thus confusing the direction of Anglo-Oriental power dynamics.

Incorporating elements of literary criticism, cultural studies, and social history, Pleasures and Pains takes a new look at the complicated dynamics of empire as well as the development of still-prevalent perceptions of drugs as alien invaders responsible for the decay of national character.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [143]-151) and index.