Viewing the Islamic orient

"The reductive and essentialist Western view of the Islamic Orient in the nineteenth century exerted a powerful influence on British travelers to the East. However, the experience of travel in the Orient made some popular travel writers - James Morier, Alexander Kinglake, Richard Burton, and Gertrude Bell - uneasy with this view of the "other". Even as they subscribed to this reductive view of the Orient, their personal encounter with the "other" and the physical and psychological displacement caused by their travel experience led them to question and even challenge their culture's assumptions of the Orient. Their shifting perception of the "other" reveals all the tensions and influences of their personal backgrounds and their historical and political milieu. By analyzing these aspects, this book argues for a more nuanced and hybrid approach to the understanding of the relationship between the West and the Islamic Orient." "Viewing the Islamic Orient: British Travel Writers of the Nineteenth Century will be of particular interest to scholars of comparative literature and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.