Avant-garde orientalism : the eastern 'other' in Twentieth-century travel narrative and poetry / David LeHardy Sweet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sweet, David LeHardy, 1961- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orientalism in literature.

Physical Description:

xiii, 318 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-297) and index.

ISBN:

3319503723

9783319503721

OCLC:

962125036