Orientalism and hegemony of empires : Egypt, Rome and Britain in John Dryden’s All for Love

Abstract EN

-Conventional criticism of John Dryden‟s All for Love (1677) traces the love story between Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt and Mark Antony the Roman general.

This paper refrains from centralizing the love story and reads All for Love as propaganda for Rome‟s imperialism and by extension the rising British Empire.

This reading reconstructs the dramatic role of the characters not as personas in the love story but as independent and dynamic agents who can fulfill or obstruct the imperial hegemony of Rome.

Surprisingly, critics tend to ignore the distinct cultural aspects of ancient Egypt which Dryden manipulates to deliver his message.

Through the use of images, which in most part depend heavily on fundamental aspects from the ancient civilization of the land of the pharos, the paper reveals Dryden‟s constructs of symbolic, military and political contrast between Egypt and Rome.

The symbolic contrast reveals how Dryden employs gods, the Nile and the pharaohs along with their symbolism of power, life and death to assert the superiority of Rome.

In the military and political contrast, Dryden allows Egypt to be effeminate while Rome is manly.

The contrast between the effeminate Egypt and manly Rome is conducted through, Cleopatra, Caesar Octavius and Mark Antony.

To be able to appreciate Dryden‟s imperial propaganda, discourse analysis is to be used along with Edward Said‟s critique of orientalism.

Such multi-perspectivism enables us to discern the contrasted images of the Occident and the Orient which are designed to stress the supremacy of Rome and justify the annihilation of Egypt.