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Rethinking Britishness in the Fictional Japanese Letters of T. J. Wooler's Black Dwarf
Author(s) -
HWANG JINGHUEY
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2012.00475.x
Subject(s) - britishness , orientalism , pride , the imaginary , identity (music) , context (archaeology) , character (mathematics) , literature , philosophy , history , politics , art , theology , law , aesthetics , political science , psychology , psychoanalysis , archaeology , geometry , mathematics
Abstract This article explores national identity and Orientalism in the context of post‐1815 British politics by examining T. J. Wooler's radical weekly The Black Dwarf . The essay investigates Wooler's adaptation of the well‐known eighteenth‐century literary ploy of the imaginary Oriental correspondence, and maintains that his Black Dwarf's epistolary communications with Japanese and supernatural addressees challenge the boundaries of Britishness. A mysterious figure, Wooler's character of the Black Dwarf differs from his literary Oriental precedents, but it is precisely this otherness that contributes to his critical authority to puncture British pride and to illustrate the transnational values of truth and liberty.