| Title: | “The Egyptian maid or the romance of the water lily” de William Wordsworth: Le Fantasme de L’Orient |
| Author: | Virginie Thomas |
| Publication: | Meridian Critic / Analele Universităţii „Ștefan cel Mare” din Suceava. Seria Filologie. A. Lingvistică, B. Literatură, 22 (1), Section Criticism. East–West, p. 35-47 |
| p-ISSN: | 2069-6787 |
| Publisher: | Editura Universităţii din Suceava |
| Place: | Suceava |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Abstract: | In 1828 William Wordsworth, the famous British Romantic poet, wrote a poem entitled « The Egyptian Maid and the Romance of the Water Lily” in which he staged the encounter between the Western world, embodied by the Knights of the Round Table and Merlin, and the East, symbolized by a Maid arriving from Egypt. A series of dichotomies is established opposing a Christian male West to a pagan female East. Yet, because of Merlin’s jealousy when confronted with the sensual beauty of the heathen figurehead of the Egyptian boat, the Maid is led to a deadly doom, which enables the author to subvert the question of faith and of the boundaries between the East and the West. As a matter of fact, the East turns out to be more Christian than the West and becomes God’s chosen agent in his process of resurrection of the Egyptian Maid. Through this poem, Wordsworth reveals his ideal of Romantic aesthetics bringing to the fore the concept of synthesis: of the East and the West, of reason and imagination, of femininity and power. |
| Key words: | William Wordsworth, Arthurian legends, Romantic poetry, Arthurian Revival, orientalism, representation of femininity |
| Language: | French |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
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