Orientalism

1) The representation of Eastern cultures, particularly as an 'other' to Western culture 2) The imitation of aspects of 'the Orient' by Western writers, artists and architects

Orientalism is the European or Western practice of generating certain images of the "Orient" in thought and representation systems (literature, the arts, science). The so-called Orient (deriving from the Latin word "oriens" meaning "east") is supposed to be both a cultural and a geographical entity. However, it cannot be located exactly. Sometimes, it is taken to include anything east of Europe, practically all of Asia; sometimes it refers to the whole of Islamic countries.

In his book Orientalism (1978) Edward Said offers a post-structuralist approach suggesting that Orientalism or the Orient is a construct, a discourse. The Orient is defined by otherness, as opposed and in relation to the West, or the occident, defining it in return. The Orient might, for example, stand in for passion, femininity and mystery - as opposed to the West, which, by excluding these traits, constructs itself as logical/reasonable, masculine and familiar.

Influenced by the works of Foucault and Gramsci, Said focuses on the period of imperialism pointing out that Orientalism, like knowledge, is always linked to power and that the West’s construction of the Orient is a sign of dominance over it.

The Beginnings of Orientalism

Literature

The Orient has been a subject in literature since antiquity; its literary discovery in Europe later on, however, was initiated by the first French publication of One Thousand and One Nights between 1704 and 1717. Although there was no serious edition in English or German until a hundred years later, French language and culture were very influential in the eighteenth century. Thus, the work stimulated the imagination of many writers and readers, although there still existed rather little factual knowledge about the Orient.

In their works Montesquieu (among others: Lettres Persanes; 1721), Kant (lectures 1772-96) and Voltaire (Zadig, ou La destineé, Histoire Orientale; 1747) use the Orient as a geographically as well as culturally far-off entity to critically review the situation in Europe and European ways of thinking. In England Samuel Johnson published his didactic novel Rasselas. The Prince of Abissinia (1759), similarly telling the story of a disillusioned protagonist in Kairo. Later, parallel to the popular development of the gothic novel, authors like John Hawkesworth (Almoran and Hamet, 1761), James Ridley (Tales of Genji, 1764) and Frances Sheridan (The History of Nourjahad, 1767) wrote novels set in exotic locations, constituting the so-called Oriental novel. The gothic and Oriental themes meet in William Beckford’s Vathek. An Arabian Tale (1786).

While in England these kind of novels became increasingly popular, German thinkers and writers like Hamann, Herder, Schlegel and Hegel concerned themselves with theoretical aspects of the occupation with Oriental literary themes and the Oriental culture as such.

After 1800 the Orient turned into an object of romantic craving. Rebellious heroes who disdained society’s morals travelling the Orient became fashionable. Writers and poets like Lord Byron, John Keats, Thomas Moore and Sir Walter Scott all sent their protagonists on journeys through the Orient. In addition to this, writers went out to travel to Oriental locations themselves for educational purposes or pilgrimage, thus, invigorating Orientalist literature and art even more.

Sources

• Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th anniversary ed. with a new preface (1st ed. 1978). New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
• Syndram, Karl Ulrich. “Der erfundene Orient in der europäischen Literatur vom 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts.“ Europa und der Orient 800-1900. Ed. Gereon Sievernich and Hendrik Budde. Gütersloh/München: Bertelsmann, 1989. 324-341.
• http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html