Burton and Orientalism

ISBN-13: 9783845403496 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 256 str.

John Wallen

Opis

The present work examines the way in which the travels and journeys in Arabia and other Muslim lands of Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-century explorer and writer have, since the influential work of Edward W. Said on Orientalism, been somewhat undervalued by contemporaries. It aims to offer a re-evaluation of those works and their contribution to Victorian knowledge. It also offers a challenge to Said's account of Burton and, particularly in the second part of the book, looks at the negative ways in which Burton has been viewed more generally by post-colonial theorists since Said's influential work. A further aim of the book is to bring together the viewpoints on Burton of the biographers and postcolonial critics who appear to have previously worked largely in isolation from one another. It is the author's belief that such a union will lead to a mutually beneficial process of cross-fertilisation that will reveal a more complicated-and also more accurate-Burton for detailed future consideration and discussion.

O autorze

Dr John Wallen has here written a profoundly knowledgeable book about the Victorian traveller and writer, Richard Francis Burton. The essential thesis of the work is the way in which Edward Said and subsequent postcolonial critics have frequently misinterpreted Burton and his contribution to Victorian knowledge for their own intellectual purposes.