Narcissism of Empire: Loss, Rage and Revenge in the Works of Thomas De Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Isak Dinesen

by Diane Simmons

Widely read in the age of British imperialism and still popular today, the five writers studied here have allowed millions to participate vicariously in the imperial project. Yet all of these writers, so instrumental in popularising the imperial agenda of power and dominance, bore deep emotional scars and as adults bolstered their fragile psychic states through fantasies of empire. While soldiers and politicians may know to bury or at least camouflage their fears and desires, inner fantasy is the necessary ingredient of literature, and popular fiction often offers the opportunity to probe the mind of an age. The connection between childhood loss and the desire for imperial escape, power and dominance is illuminated by De Quincey's mad screeds against the Chinese as both terrifyingly powerful and laughably weak, while Stevenson's romances, though written from an invalid's bed, are credited with 'selling' the idea of empire as manly adventure. Conan Doyle's tales of a Britain
menaced at home by imperi

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Diane Simmons' novel Dreams Like Thunder, set on a farm in Eastern Oregon at the end of the Frontier, won the Oregon Book Award. Her short story collection, Little America, about life on the road in the West, won the Ohio State University Prize for Short Fiction. Her story, "Yukon River," was runner-up for the Missouri Review Editor's Prize. Short stories have appeared in Fiction Magazine, Northwest Review, Missouri Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Drunken Boat

Reviews

[Linde · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read chapter 4 which is on Conan Doyle. It raises some interesting questions regarding empire and the consequences of imperialism but it does not touch upon the subject that I would have liked it to, namely Conan Doyle's historical fiction. Simmons focus lies firmly on the Sherlock Holmes stories.