고려대학교

초록/요약

The Romantic period from 1780's to 1830's in Britain witnessed the advent of industrial revolution and the expansion of British slave trade and imperialism in the world. Ironically, this period coincides with the rise of popular anti-slavery movement, first against the slave trade, and later the slavery itself. Many Romantic women poets contributed to it significantly by writing and publishing their anti-slavery poems in magazines and books as part of the whole socio-cultural movement at the time. However, it seems that their poems comprise a tension and conflict between their sentimental, Christian, humanistic, moralistic enlightenment ethos and a complicated involvement in the ideologies of racism, British imperialism and nationalism in their stereotypical representation of the Other. Economic historians argue that the transition from mercantile colonialism in Britain to a new capitalist imperialism at the end of the eighteenth century, required the abolition of slavery system for a more efficient 'free' labor in, and 'free' trade with, the colonies. Based on this premise, this study tries to read closely the anti-slavery poems of Hannah More, Ann Yearsley, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Mary Robinson, Helen Williams, Phillis Wheatley, and Amelia Opie. The conclusion suggests that although their poems contributed considerably to the development of anti-slavery movement at the period, they also, in a way, anticipate the rise of the discourse of racism and imperialism in Victorian England.