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Of Mountains and Seas (1989) and Snow in August (1997) are two plays which Gao Xingjian completed in France and contain direct references to ancient Chinese cultures. With reference to Gao’s “cold” theatrical techniques of suppositionality and tripartite acting, I argue such plays not only expose the Orientalist impulses in their portrayals of Chinese mythology and Zen Buddhism but also breathe new life into these ancient Chinese traditions. By highlighting Gao’s emphasis on observation, this paper demonstrates how his “escape” from Orientalism via literature is less about the avoidance of Orientalism than the reflexive observation of Orientalism.

The Orientalist scenario that Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia displays is an incontestable representation of the ‘Orient’ as an exoticised ‘Other’ that menaces Western civilization with its inherent tendency towards depravation and savagery. In Christie’s novel, the archaeological site configures a terrain wherein civilisation is safeguarded because controlled by Westerners and yet, civilisation is disrupted the moment a murder is committed and everything indicates that the murderer is ‘one of us’, not the oriental ‘Other’. However, the stranger that endangers the civilising integrity of an otherwise unpolluted, commendable Orientalist enterprise by murdering ‘one of us’ is none other than the victim, Mrs Leidner, who goes through an orientalising process that premeditatedly transforms her into the essential Oriental female, the Belle Dame sans Merci. This article aims at unmasking how the Orientalist plot of Murder in Mesopotamia is strategically used to condemn the woman, the victim, and exonerate the murderer, the husband. Hence, the ‘Oriental’ female that lurks behind Mrs Leidner’s ‘blonde, Scandinavian fairness’ ( Mesopotamia 28) is exposed whereas Dr Leidner’s past as a German spy is conspicuously undermined. What this Orientalist plot ultimately unveils is the prescience of ‘whiteness’ as a discursively constructed category just as elusive as gender.

James Justinian Morier’s The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824) shaped orientalist stereotypes until the early twentieth century. Scholars have examined the novel’s racism separately from gender and class anxieties in the often-neglected sequel, The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan in England (1828). Reading these two novels jointly reveals a British imperial masculinity in crisis during a precarious period in Anglo-Persian relations: the embassy of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan Shirazi Ilchi from Qajar Iran to late Georgian Britain in 1809–10 and 1819–20. This essay argues that Abul Hassan’s celebrity status in the tabloid news media inspired Londoners to adopt Persian fashions queerly, their gender deviancy informing Morier’s fiction about a foppish cross-dressed upstart from Ispahan. I argue that Abul Hassan’s mediatized body drove Morier to satirize fashionable Englishmen as a foreign race, allowing him to claim British gentility. Less concerned with Persians than with their effeminate admirers in England, his satire suggests that the “Orient” was constituted by intersectional gender, class, and racial identities in flux.

Batı'da oluşan ve bugün hala kullanılmaya devam edilen Türk imajının kökenleri tarihsel gelişmelerle bağlantılıdır. Her ne kadar Türklerin Avrupa'ya yerleşmeleri İkinci Dünya Savaşından sonra olsa da Batı'nın Türklerle tanışması eski tarihlere dayanmaktadır. Farklı tarihlerde Batılılar ve Türkleri karşı karşıya getiren savaşlar ve özellikle Haçlı Seferleri sonrası Türkler hakkında olumsuz imaj oluşmaya başlamaktadır. Oryantalist düşünce çerçevesinde Türkler, Doğulu ve Müslüman olarak tanımlandığından Batı'nın algısında Türk ve Müslüman kavramlarının aynı anlamı taşıdığı görülmektedir. İlişkiler, "Türkler her şeyden önce bir düşmandır" algısı üzerine kurulmaktadır. Batı dillerinde Türkler hakkında oluşmuş ötekileştirici ve küçümseyici türkofobik deyimler de tarihten gelen Türk korkusuna vurgu yapmaktadır. Türkiye ve Türklere yönelik önyargılar aynı zamanda Türkiye'nin Avrupa Birliğine üyelik sürecini de etkilemektedir.

Orientalism as a literary phenomenon has been recently focused on by different writers all over the world. Many of those who write about Orientalism have not the same understanding, and the divergences are reproduced due to different attitudes toward Orientalism. From various studies concerning Orientalism, there are apparent tributaries confronting the understanding of the concept of Orientalism from different perspectives. Edward Said is one of those who, according to what many Western and Eastern writers say, represent the negative attitude towards Orientalism, and tries only to make it appear ugly and offensive. Many writers, Arabs and non-Arabs, take, more or less, the same approach Said used towards the subject of Orientalism. Others have, to some extent, tried to give excuses for the writers, especially the Romantics, for the negative impression their writings reflected on the readers when going through what is supposed to be Oriental works. Nigel Leask, Sari Makdisi, Emily Haddad, Martin Bright, Tripta Wahi and Naji Oueijan are the significant writers of this group. British orientalists did not use the right approach to look or write about the East. What irritates Said is that these orientalists did not pay attention to find any possibility by which they could bridge the gap between the European and Asiatic parts of the world. This paper tries to trace and to define Lord Byron’s type of Orientalism in some of his oriental works and his chief work Don Juan.

During the Ottoman Empire, which was established in Anatolia after the Seljuks, many developments were made in the name of art for 600 years. Especially thanks to the Ottoman Empire's value to the artist and art, very good works have been produced in many fields. In addition to branches such as calligraphy, illumination, miniature and marbling, fabrics, carpets and rugs, which attract the attention of the whole world in the field of textile, were also woven. The art of weaving experienced its brightest period in terms of weaving technique, color and pattern in the Ottoman Empire. It is understood that weaving, which continued to be produced traditionally in Ottoman cities, continued its existence as an important cultural element and sector. The clothes of the Ottoman sultans kept after their death and the qualities of the fabrics used in the palace convey very important information at the point of understanding the importance of weaving. The diversity and richness of the weavings and textiles produced in many documents belonging to the period can be clearly seen. In this context, this rich weaving and textile diversity has taken an important place in Turkish culture. Especially this rich variety of weaving and textiles has been painted by many painters in almost every period and has gained an important place in terms of conveying information about their periods. In this study, some of Halil Pasha's paintings in which he displayed an objective and objective approach with a realistic style, some of which are in an orientalist style, are discussed as subject. In the study, will focus on Halil Pasha's life, his understanding of art and the textiles and clothing he depicted in some of his paintings. The textiles and clothes in the paintings were discussed in terms of characteristics such as color, pattern, and texture. Key Words: Textile, weaving arts, clothing, painting, carpet.

Una de las contradicciones más llamativas al interior de lo que se conoce como la escuela Bauhaus se dio entre el futurismo tecnicista-humanista de Walter Gropius y el ocultismo orientalista de otros miembros, como Johannes Itten. Aunque ambos buscaban armonizar la existencia del ser humano con el entorno que habita, las teorías en las que ambas tendencias basaban sus prácticas llegaban a ser irreconciliables. Era inconcebible que el ideal artístico de Itten estuviera al servicio de la humanidad en su conjunto cuando defendía nociones protoracistas sobre la capacidad exclusiva de un grupo étnico para alcanzar dicha armonía. Muchas de estas ideas quedaron incluso plasmadas en su obra de arte y no sólo en escritos y discursos publicados. El propio interés de Itten por la cultura y el arte oriental convivió incómodamente con estas tendencias, dejando un legado ambivalente y problemático, el cual ha sido recientemente señalado por algunos estudiosos del movimiento. Aquí analizaremos algunas aristas de esta contradicción y sus implicaciones desde el punto de vista de la comparatística. Resulta necesario plantearnos cómo se deben ver estas inconsistencias si queremos evitar caer en una postura trivial y poco crítica de un movimiento cultural tan relevante como lo fue la escuela Bauhaus.

espanolLo llamado “oriental” siempre ha sido objeto de fascinacion “occidental”. Hoy en dia, la escenificacion de “Oriente” en la fotografia de modelos (por aficion) es uno de los temas mas populares: se combinan trajes y accesorios de diversos contextos culturales para formar un nuevo conjunto. Basandose en la observacion participativa y en las entrevistas, el articulo rastrea las posibles motivaciones individuales para encarnar lo “oriental”, entre ellas la nostalgia, que se corresponde con la descripcion de lo oriental como “intemporal”, la necesidad de espiritualidad, el deseo de expresar la feminidad y de trabajar la identidad con respecto a los ensayos de identidad y la definicion de la propia identidad con ayuda de su opuesto imaginado. Teniendo en cuenta la sociedad en su conjunto y su zeitgeist, el fenomeno se interpreta utilizando los conceptos de escapismo y kitsch, que tambien pueden observarse en la cultura dominante. Ademas, se discute la apropiacion cultural como una forma de evitar el conocimiento de otras culturas, pero al mismo tiempo, la sesion de fotos “oriental” tambien se ve como una oportunidad para generar interes y practicar la creatividad. El articulo muestra que el analisis de las fotografias escenificadas ofrece una base para entender el contexto cultural en el que se han tomado y/o circulan, y que los motivos de las fotos pueden verse como expresiones de motivaciones psicologicas. EnglishThe so-called “oriental” has always been a subject for “western” fascination. Today, the staging of the “orient” in (hobby) model photography is among the most popular themes: costumes and props from various cultural contexts are combined to form a new whole. Based on participant observation and interviews, the article traces back possible individual motivations for embodying the “oriental,” among them nostalgia, corresponding with the description of the orient as “timeless,” the need for spirituality, the wish to express femininity, and to work on identity with regard to identity trials and the definition of the own identity through the help of its imagined opposite. Considering society as a whole and its zeitgeist, the phenomenon is interpreted using the concepts of escapism and kitsch, which can be observed in mainstream culture as well. Furthermore, cultural appropriation is discussed as a way to prevent getting to know other cultures, but at the same time, the “oriental” photoshoot is also seen as a chance to generate interest and to practice creativity. The article shows that the analysis of staged photographs offers a base for understanding the cultural context in which they have been taken and/or circulate, and that the photo motifs can be seen as expressions of psychological motivations.

Resume : L'article analyse l'evolution de l'image de la colonie de Libye au cours des annees trente, comme cela est represente dans deux des principaux magazines touristiques italiens de l'epoque : Le vie d'Italia et Libia. Si jusqu'au milieu des annees trente, il regne une vision orientaliste qui exaspere les aspects les plus exotiques et excentriques consideres, a la mi-decennie, les articles de magazine enoncent la modernisation progressive de la colonie, grâce au travail du regime fasciste. Mots cles : Libye – tourisme – colonialisme – orientalisme – propagande fasciste Abstract : The article analyzes the evolution of the image of the Libyan colony during the Thirties, as it is depicted in two of the main Italian tourist magazines of the time : Le Vie d'Italia and Libia. Until the mid-Thirties, in the description of the country prevails an orientalist vision, that tends to exasperate the most exotic and eccentric aspects of the Libyan colony. This approch changes in the mid-decade, when the magazine articles start to underline the progressive modernization of the colony, due to the work of the fascist regime. Key words : Libya – tourism – colonialism – orientalism – fascist propaganda

Max Müller 19. yüzyıl İngiltere’sinin önemli din araştırmacılarındandır. Dinler Tarihinin kurucusu olarak kabul edilen Müller Doğu Dinleri araştırmaları ile dikkati çeker. Onun Hinduizmle ilgili araştırmaları İngiltere’nin kolonist anlayışı ile aynı paralellikte devam eder. Dinî araştırmalarda bilimsel disipline önem veren Müller’in Doğu ile ilgili tanımlamaların çoğu yine Batı merkezlidir. İslam ve Türklerle ilgili değerlendirmelerinde de durum böyledir. Türklere dair olumsuz düşünceleri daha çok Osmanlı’nın Anadolu ve Balkanlardaki hâkimiyeti ile ilgilidir. Ancak Müller’in 1893 yılında eşi ile birlikte İstanbul ve Bursa’yı ziyareti tümüyle olmasa da pek çok önyargısını ortadan kaldırır. Bu ziyarette Müller, Sultan Abdülhamid’le görüşür ve sıcak ilişki kurar. Sultana editörlük yaptığı Doğunun Kutsal Kitapları’nı takdim eder ve Sultan Abdülhamid de Müller ailesine çeşitli hediyeler verir. Müller İngiltere’ye döndükten sonra da İstanbul’da yaşadıklarına ve Sultanla ilgili görüşmelerine sıkça yer verir. Osmanlı aleyhine zamanla Batı kamuoyunda değişen ortam Müller’in düşüncelerinde de değişikliğe neden olmaktadır. Ancak bu defaki tahlilleri tamamen siyah veya beyaz değildir. İstanbul’da gördüklerinden dolayı düşüncelerinde gri tonlar oluşmuştur. Bu anlamda Max Müller’in İstanbul ziyareti, oryantalist bakışa ve ötekini anlama açısından sahadan alınan verilerin ne kadar önemli olduğuna büyük katkı yapmaktadır., Max Müller is one of the most important religious researchers of 19th century England. Considered as the History of Religions founder, Müller draws attention with his studies on Eastern Religions. The general perspective of his comments on Islam and Turks is like this. His negative thoughts about Turks are mostly related to the domination of the Ottomans in Anatolia and the Balkans. However, Müller’s visit to Istanbul and Bursa with his wife in 1893 eliminated many of his prejudices but not all. In this visit, Müller meets with Sultan Abdülhamid and establishes a warm relationship. He presented the Sacred Books of the East to the Sultan, which he edited, and the Sultan Abdülhamid gave various gifts to the Müller’s family. After returning to England, Müller frequently mentions his experiences in Istanbul and talks with the Sultan. During the deprecation of Western media about the Ottomans, Müller’s thoughts changed. However, this time his analyzes are not entirely black or white. Due to what he saw in Istanbul, gray tones were formed in his thoughts. In this sense, Max Müller’s visit to Istanbul makes a significant contribution to the orientalist perspective and the importance of the data taken from the field in terms of understanding the other.

Critics have argued that Charlotte Bronte’s Villette depicts queerness as a radically incoherent, subversive force. Against these readings, this article reconfigures queerness as a liveable concept...

In the Western decadent imagination, Egypt has been figured as the site of Orientalist fantasy, a land of sphinxes, pyramids, and mummies having little to do with modernity. For a modern Arab write...

Bu çalışma Türk şiirini İngilizce okuyanlara, Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Eda: Çağdaş Türk Şiiri Antolojisi) üzerine bir çeviri eleştirisi sunmayı amaçlar. Editör-çevirmen Murat Nemet-Nejat, çağdaş Türk şiirinin merkezine, Divan şiirinin mirası mistik Sufi özü koyar. Bu bir genellemedir çünkü diğer etkileri hafife alır. Ayrıca, kaynak şiirlerin çevirilerle karşılaştırmalı analizi göstermiştir ki çevirmen, yaptığı aşırı vurguya karşın, “eda” diye adlandırdığı Sufi özü içeren şiirlere konu ve biçim açısından yakın çeviriler ortaya koymaz. Aksine şiirlerdeki karakteristik tasavvufî öğeler atılmış ve şiirler post-kolonial bir eleştiriden kaçamayacak bir biçimde değiştirilmiştir. Kısacası, antoloji okurlara Türk şiirinin bir yeniden yazımını, tahrif edilmiş, oryantalist bir çizgide homoerotik imajlarla süslenmiş bir temsilini sunar., This study intends to present the readers of Turkish Poetry in English a translation criticism of Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry. The editor-translator, Murat Nemet-Nejat, positions the mystic Sufistic essence of Turkish literature, the legacy of Divan Poetry, to the core of contemporary Turkish poetry in the paratextual material. This claim is an overgeneralization because it underestimates other influences. Moreover, a comparative analysis of the source poems to the translations indicated that contrary to his overemphasis, the translator does not display close thematic or formative renderings of the poems that contain the Sufistic “essence” which he calls “eda”. Rather, the characteristic Sufistic elements are eliminated and poems are manipulated to such an extent that will not escape a postcolonial criticism. Shortly, the anthology offers the readers a rewriting that provides the readers with a distorted representation of Turkish poems in an orientalist alignment embellished with homoerotic images.

The opulent colours and ornamentation, exotic characters and landscapes, as well as astonishing journeys and magic may resemble other European adaptations of Arabian Nights fairy tales. Yet remarka...

The evolution of augmented, mixed and virtual realities has opened up opportunities for some artists to construct work that in the past would have required expensive sets Art historian and curator Kathy Battista shows us some examples of these new creative models of practice and the speculative worldmodelling they have produced Copyright © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

The paper focuses on the artistic work of Moses Levy (Tunis, 1885 - Viareggio, 1968), painter and printmaker active in Italy, Tunisia and Paris. A peculiar figure of cosmopolitan painter, whose father was British and the mother Italian, and whose art eludes attempts at univocal classification. On the contrary, it remains emblematic of the fruitfulness made possible by the encounter between different artistic traditions, as well as the reciprocal enrichment offered by the plurality of cultures. Deeply linked by birth to the Jewish community in Tunis, he moved to Italy at a very young age, where he came into contact with the major exponents of the Tuscan school of painting around the turn of the century, starting with Giovanni Fattori. Constantly commuting between the two shores of the Mediterranean, he became an example of dialogue between different worlds, between his African roots, his Tuscan upbringing, his French-speaking culture and his stays in Paris, where he met Chagall and Picasso and could not fail to find a natural identification with Matisse’s pure rhythms and solar charge. A regular exhibitor at the Salons Tunisiens, in 1936 he was a co-founder of the Le Quatre group and later one of the promoters of the École de Tunis. Thus, the local artists saw in Levy the master who had been able to promote the birth of a modern art that was representative of Tunisian culture and people, but free from any easy Orientalist stereotype or folkloric flavour.

In Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille, the entanglement of Spain and Morocco emerges through the diasporic figure of Aslima, the Moroccan sex worker. This essay examines McKay’s Maurophilia, which he circuitously refers to as “Afro-Orientalism” in his various writings. Maurophilia not only foregrounds Aslima’s associations with Spain and Morocco but also highlights McKay’s engagement with transhistorical Mediterranean diasporas, including the intra-African slave trade and Iberian Moriscos and conversos settling in North Africa following the Reconquista. This essay argues that while Aslima’s associations with Moorish-Iberian performance styles influence McKay’s modernist poetics and radical aspirations for a global pandiasporic Black alliance, Romance in Marseille ultimately forecloses the prospect of a pan-Mediterranean, Black Atlantic globalism because of contradictions of gender and religion.

Postmodern architectural products that can be described as kitsch have become rapidly consumed objects because they have appealed to the whole society. As a demand stimulating, easily comprehensible, and rapidly consumable product, kitsch has gained an important place in postmodern culture and architecture. These features of kitsch have easily made it a paradoxical part of consumption culture. After the Neoclassical boom in the 18th century, architectural movements such as Eclecticism, Orientalism, and Historicism became widespread in the 19th century. Towards the end of the 20th century, these tendencies came to the fore again within the Postmodern paradigm, and new kitsch architectural structures have begun to be produced in these undertakings in accordance with the spirit of the period. Eclecticism which has become prominent again in postmodern architecture has been referred to as neo-eclecticism or eclectic populism and has been defined as a style that ‘complexity, uncertainty and contradictions’ are expressed, ‘references from history and symbolic elements are used. Together with various historical forms in the postmodern period, orientalist images have been also used. Images consisting of stylized views of the Western culture on the Orient and that are not based on an authentic eastern depiction have been used in the production of orientalist architectural form. In recent years, eclectic, kitsch, orientalist, neoclassical forms that are independent of context and time have been frequently encountered in architectural applications in also Turkey. On one hand, elements from Turkish culture have been used and on the other hand, architectural elements from foreign cultures have been preferred. It is seen that there have been contradictions between form and meaning in educational structures built in Turkey during the period that the paradigms of the Postmodern era have been dominant. In this study, it is aimed to read and analyze the concepts of kitsch, eclecticism, neoclassicism, orientalism in the postmodern paradigm on recent university buildings and campus portals. In line with this purpose, an extensive literature research was conducted within the scope of the study; in the case study, recent university buildings and portals were analyzed in terms of postmodernism, the historical periods and architectural elements they derived were determined.

This article analyses the novel “La vieille dame du riad” (2011) by Fouad Laroui, a Moroccan-Dutch writer of French expression. We examine the strategies (generic and intertextual) used by the novelist to ridicule the Orientalist prejudices which persist in the current time. Generic hybridity (the presence of some elements of the detective story, fantasy novel and oriental tale) is used to develop the satirical dimension of the novel.

For centuries, Marco Polo's legends of the Old Man of the Mountain, his paradise garden, and his assembly of assassins have fascinated readers. Modern scholarship, however, has demonstrated that th...

This paper discusses the martial arts genre with reference to the films of the Japanese master Kurosawa Akira and the Chinese director Zhang Yimou, discussing how both directors converge in their themes and styles through the concept of “Eastern Orientalism.” Such Orientalism is based on Confucian precepts of zhengming (rectification of names), chaos theory, and the defense of the people undertaken by militaristic but heroic individual protagonists (samurai or xia). In raising the issue of Orientalism, the paper probes into the Western perceptions of the genre and the imperative of directors like Kurosawa and Zhang in pandering to Western tastes. However, these same directors seem equally preoccupied with fostering a sense of self and nationalistic expression in their response to and treatment of Orientalized content. The paper concludes with a discussion on The Great Wall (2016) as a comparative review of the Western and Eastern viewpoints at play in the US-China co-production. Here the analysis revolves around the issue of sameness, dramatized as a main theme in the film.

A curatorial conversation between Nina Blomfield and Katie Loney on the work and practice of Lockwood de Forest and The Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company. This conversation is based on a public conversation held on October 3, 2019 at the University of Pittsburgh.

El pantún es una forma fija poética proveniente de Malasia que se incorpora a la poesía francesa de una manera peculiar en el siglo XIX. La estructura comienza a difundirse en Francia mediante una traducción en una nota al final de Les Orientales de Victor Hugo, en la que aparece acompañada de otras traducciones árabes y persas proporcionadas por un reconocido orientalista de la época, Ernest Fouinet. En conjunto, esta serie de traducciones participan en la justificación de la estética romántica. Tras esta primera aparición, el pantún será objeto de exploración de sensibilidades poéticas diversas a lo largo del siglo XIX: algunas de sus imágenes son evocadas con insistencia en diversos textos de algunos poetas, y su forma incita a explorar en los efectos de la repetición alternada y organizada de los versos. Con el paso del tiempo, “Harmonie du soir” de Baudelaire se convertirá en el modelo de referencia más inmediato de esta estructura poética. El pantún que se desarrolla en Francia plantea un mecanismo singular de repetición de versos (el segundo y cuarto verso de cada estrofa son retomados en el primero y tercer verso de la siguiente) y crea una analogía que distingue de forma precisa naturaleza y experiencia. Además de observar las características y condiciones de esta primera inserción en la nota al final de la obra mencionada de Victor Hugo, el propósito de este artículo es reflexionar sobre las funciones que cumple una forma fija importada de otra cultura, y las circunstancias que permiten su asimilación en la historia literaria francesa.

This article tackles the topic of Orientalism in some stories of Jorge Luis Borges. We intend to emphasize and analyze the role that The Thousand and One Nights plays in the work and literary thought of the great Argentinian author. "Ibn Hakam al Bokhari, Murdered in his labyrinth" and "The two kings and the two labyrinths" are two of the stories of Borges that contain elements Orientals and deal with the same topic: the labyrinth.