The Last Man and the Plague of Empire Essay example -- Shelley The Las

The Last cosmos and the enkindle of Empire I find myself in easy agreement with Alan Richardsons perceptive account of The Last Man as a novel create verbally in the service of British colonial interests and of bloody shame Shelley as an single swept up in the collective arrogance of nineteenth-century imperial England. In one striking example of the novels colonialist complicity, Lionel Verney presumptuously decl atomic number 18s that Englands prime resource is its pot (its children 323) whereas the greatest assets of the equatorial regions are their commodities--their spices, plants, and fruits. Verney further sentimentally recalls Britains history of fearless exploration (read colonization and economic exploitation) of foreign nations under the crowns sponsorship, as he grieves for lost times when man walked the earth fearless, before Plague had fashion Queen of the World (346). It appears crystal-clear that The Last Man contains fewer sites of res istance than are present in Frankenstein and more moments of racism, jingoism, and religious contempt therefore, in put to facilitate conversation, I will address here primarily the assertable meanings of the novels few heteroglossic moments, including the ironic twist or two towards the end that Alan Richardson mentions, in addition to posing some suggestive, or polemical, questions. The horror of The Last Man may for Shelley lie in its revelation that the operations of nature cloud both civilized and barbaric, Christian and Mahometan, with the same moral neutrality. In the end, Adrian, the school blue-eyed boy (27), a stand-in for Percy Shelley, s... ...e United States, 1898-1935. http//www.accinet.ent/fjzwick/ail98-35.html (December 2003). Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Learning to curse Essays in Early Modern Culture.New York Routledge, 1990. Holmes, Richard. Shelley The PursuitLondon Penguin,1974. Kipling, Rudyard. The White Mans Burden. McClures Magazine 12 (Feb.1899). http//www.accinet.net/fjzwick/kipling.html In Jim Zwick,ed., Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935. http//www.accinet.ent/fjzwick/ail98-35.html (January 2004). Richardson, Alan. Romantic Circles The Last Man and the Plague of Empire. http//prometheus.emory.edu/RC/mwsprogram.html (September 2003). Shelley, Mary W. The Last Man. Betty T. Bennett and Steven E. Jones, eds. http//www.rc.umd.edu/editions/editions.htmlmws September 2003