Romantic restorative reconstruction shaped Orientalist writing’s form and intent

Evidence

The trend toward the exotic was fueled by the growth of Romanticism, an artistic and philosophical movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The image of an exotic Orient associated with “sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, [and] intense energy” can be found in the works of musicians, painters, novelists, and philosophers from Mozart to Byron, Hugo, and Goethe. To be fair, the Romantics did not only look to the East for the exotic: they also looked to their own past, drawing from Gothic tales and stories of European barbarians. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89; Orientalist aesthetics repress affect to achieve clinical exactness of detail.; Modern Orientalism expanded representational range after the late eighteenth century (+1 more)

Related

• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge (similarity 0.89)
• Orientalism’s ontological rigidity makes its fantasies nearly impossible to dismantle (similarity 0.89)
• Orientalist science masks an egoistic will to power (similarity 0.88)
• Romantic adventurers challenged the institutional authority of professional Orientalists. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism ignores factual accuracy in favor of exotic horror (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalist aesthetics repress affect to achieve clinical exactness of detail. (similarity 0.86)
• Modern Orientalism expanded representational range after the late eighteenth century (similarity 0.85)
• Eighteenth-century France romanticized exotic others as noble (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist painters invented imagery of Eastern despotism they never witnessed (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.83)
• Travelers’ firsthand experience could not overturn their Orientalist fantasies (similarity 0.81)
• Even putatively impartial scientific Orientalism remains an egoistic interpretive act that rebuilds its object. (similarity 0.81)
• Romantic Orientalism treated Asia as a means to regenerate Europe, not as an end (similarity 0.81)
• Author Beckford lived out Orientalist fantasy by renaming his estate Baghdad (similarity 0.81)
• The Orientalist’s constructed Orient displaced the actual Orient in European discourse (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge #corroborates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89
• Orientalist aesthetics repress affect to achieve clinical exactness of detail. #complicates (0.80)
• Modern Orientalism expanded representational range after the late eighteenth century #expands (0.75)
• Orientalists recycled predecessors’ texts instead of observing the real Orient #corroborates (0.75)