HENA03828U English - Free topic: Orientalism in Literary Fiction

Volume 2014/2015
Content
Orientalism’ is a way of imagining, emphasizing, exaggerating and distorting the image of Arab and Asian cultures. We will trace this phenomenon as it unfolds in English imaginative fiction, theory and history. The translation of The Arabian Nights inspired writers to develop a new genre, the Oriental tale. We will read a number of such tales from Romanticism to the early twentieth century. Among the themes we will pursue is the 19th-century literature of opium use (sometimes in the form of writing under its influence), which is closely connected with fantasies of the Orient. We will also analyze at tales of adventure, exploration and encounters with the terrifying exotic. A significant focus in the second part of the course will be the ‘Imperial Gothic’, a category which includes fantastic and supernatural tales thematizing the anxiety of the colonized taking revenge on the colonizer. It is our purpose to read these Oriental horror tales to see how they are informed by increasing imperialist doubts s and ethnic anxieties. We will take examples from canonical authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling, as well as popular sensationalist fiction.

The course will introduce the theory and practice of Orientalist fiction in order to enable you to study and work independently with literature and culture as part of a global exchange.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 28
  • Preparation
  • 176,75
  • Total
  • 204,75