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 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Pallavi Pandit Laisram
Dr. Pallavi Pandit Laisram received her Ph.D. in English from the Pennsylvania State University, USA. She taught Rhetoric and Composition and Business Communication at Penn State between 1984 and 1990. In addition, she helped bring out Penn Statements, a magazine of student writing, and evaluated papers as one of the judges for Pennsylvania's statewide high school essay competition. Later she taught spoken and written English to native and non-native speakers at Montgomery College, Maryland, USA. While at the ICFAI Center for Management Research (ICMR), the research wing of the ICFAI University, Dr. Laisram reviewed case studies and textbooks developed for national and international audiences. She edited an anthology, Business Writing, which was published by the ICFAI University Press. Dr. Laisram's main areas of interest are teaching, communication, and literature. She is particularly keen on exploring the use of rhetorical devices in literature and using literature to teach communication. Her critical studies of western images and constructs of the Orient have been published in India and abroad. She has now turned her attention to Indian women's images of the west in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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