| Lerninhalte |
In his influential analysis of Orientalism (1978), Edward Said defined it as "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient". More recent approaches have added to the idea of the 'Oriental Other' that of hybridizing and modernizing exchanges between East and West, while historical distinctions have been made between eighteenth-century theories of 'Orientalisms' and the greater range of representations of nineteenth-century British imperialism. In this seminar, we will trace these representations of empire and the Orient from the eighteenth-century reception of the translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments in England in the early eighteenth century to nineteenth-century Orientalist 'entertainments' in consumer culture. We will look at representations of self and other between estrangement, (de-)familiarity and exoticism in travel literature and paintings, Oriental tales and nineteenth-century literature, educational and philosophical narratives.
In preparation for this seminar, please read William Beckford: Vathek (1786) and John Polidori: The Vampyre (1819), both available in the Oxford World's Classics series. In addition, a reader will be made available. |
