Abstracts
Abstract
This essay examines the interrelations of religion, civilization, and imperialism in Shelley’s The Last Man. Though Shelley may envision the negative effects of imperialism in this novel, I argue that she does not critique the discourse of civilization itself, which helped justify imperialist designs. Furthermore, by viewing the aesthetic in Shelley’s novel as enmeshed with the political, I see Shelley’s aesthetic imperialism curiously aligned with the Evangelicals’ version of middle-class religion. Shelley would reject the Evangelicals’ arguments for the moral norms of Christianity as the means of civilization, but her aesthetic imperialism, through its emphasis on the self-regulation and discipline produced by literature and culture, also becomes a means to train the uncivilized in these bourgeois values.
Appendices
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