Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France
Using aspects of postcolonial and reception theory, this article explores how mid-nineteenth-century France and England responded to the sudden rediscovery of ancient Assyrian artifacts. The conception of Assyria, exemplified in the paintings of John Martin and Eugene Delacroix, before the discoveries was variously transformed and disrupted in the different institutional, critical, social, and political situations of France and England during and directly after the discoveries. The result was a more complex and hybrid range of artistic representations of Assyria, in which judgments of aesthetic value, historical veracity, and gender identities were both restated and contested.