Avant-garde Orientalism
The Eastern 'Other' in Twentieth-Century Travel Narrative and Poetry
Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
| Author: | David LeHardy Sweet | ISBN: | 9783319503738 |
| Publisher: | Springer International Publishing | Publication: | January 20, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Palgrave Macmillan | Language: | English |
| Author: | David LeHardy Sweet |
| ISBN: | 9783319503738 |
| Publisher: | Springer International Publishing |
| Publication: | January 20, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Language: | English |
This study explores the work of Western avant-garde writers who traveled to and wrote about Asia and North Africa. Though exoticist in outlook, many of these writers were also anti-colonialist and thus avoided some of the pitfalls of academic orientalism by assuming an aesthetics of diversity while employing strategies of provocation and reciprocity. As a survey of works on travel (including essays, novels, poems, and plays), the book challenges or modifies many postcolonial assumptions about Western writers on the Orient: from the French Surrealists to the American Beats and even transnational authors of the new millennium. Through a synthesis of avant-garde, postcolonial, and travel literature theories, Avant-garde Orientalism works in the best tradition of comparative literary study to identify and analyze a distinct category of world literature. * *
This study explores the work of Western avant-garde writers who traveled to and wrote about Asia and North Africa. Though exoticist in outlook, many of these writers were also anti-colonialist and thus avoided some of the pitfalls of academic orientalism by assuming an aesthetics of diversity while employing strategies of provocation and reciprocity. As a survey of works on travel (including essays, novels, poems, and plays), the book challenges or modifies many postcolonial assumptions about Western writers on the Orient: from the French Surrealists to the American Beats and even transnational authors of the new millennium. Through a synthesis of avant-garde, postcolonial, and travel literature theories, Avant-garde Orientalism works in the best tradition of comparative literary study to identify and analyze a distinct category of world literature. * *
