Nerval and Flaubert’s Orient was pre-shaped by personal and aesthetic mythology, not direct encounter

Evidence

The methodological failures of Orientalism cannot be accounted for either by saying that the real Orient is different from Orientalist portraits of it, or by saying that since Orientalists are Westerners for the most part, they cannot be expected to have an inner sense of what the Orient is all about. Both of these propositions are false. It is not the thesis of this book to suggest that there is such a thing as a real or true Orient (Islam, Arab, or whatever); nor is it to make an assertion about the necessary privilege of an “insider” perspective over an “outsider” one, to use Robert K. Merton’s useful distinction. On the contrary, I have been arguing that “the Orient” is itself a constituted entity, and that the notion that there are geographical spaces with indigenous, radically “different” inhabitants who can be defined on the basis of some religion, culture, or racial essence proper to that geographical space is equally a highly debatable idea. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 818 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Orient is a constituted entity, not a real geographic essence — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 818; The Orient is a system of representations, not a place; The Orient is a topos built from citations, not a place observed (+2 more)

Related

• The Orient is a topos built from citations, not a place observed (similarity 0.92)
• The Orient is a system of representations, not a place (similarity 0.90)
• The Orient is a constituted entity, not a real geographic essence (similarity 0.90)
• Representation constructs the Orient as a closed theatrical stage, not an open reality. (similarity 0.88)
• Orient and West are unstable human constructs, not fixed realities (similarity 0.88)
• Even sympathetic writers approached the Orient pre-formed by European reading (similarity 0.86)
• The Orient as a topos derives from text and citation, not direct observation. (similarity 0.86)
• Some nineteenth-century writers engaged the Orient aesthetically without reducing it to documentary knowledge (similarity 0.86)
• Oriental representations become repetitive pseudoincarnations serving narcissistic Western needs. (similarity 0.85)
• Geographical entities like Orient and Occident are man-made ideas, not natural facts (similarity 0.85)
• Flaubert found his prior imagining of the Orient confirmed rather than corrected by experience. (similarity 0.85)
• The Orient in European writing was a chain of textual citations, not a place (similarity 0.85)
• Even putatively impartial scientific Orientalism remains an egoistic interpretive act that rebuilds its object. (similarity 0.84)
• The real Orient rarely guided European artistic visions of it (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism functions as a self-enclosed Western text rather than knowledge of an actual Orient. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• The Orient is a topos built from citations, not a place observed #corroborates (0.85)
• The Orient is a constituted entity, not a real geographic essence #corroborates (0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 818
• The Orient is a system of representations, not a place #corroborates (0.82)