A landmark work from the author of
Orientalism
that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it.
"Grandly conceived . . . urgently written and urgently needed. . . . No one studying the relations between the metropolitan West and the decolonizing world can ignore Mr. Said's work.' —
The New York Times Book Review
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from
Mansfield Park
to
Heart of Darkness
and
Aida.
Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition,
Culture and Imperialism
reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.