Sacy justified editing Oriental texts into fragments by declaring them inferior to whole publication

Evidence

So if the Orientalist is necessary because he fishes some useful gems out of the distant Oriental deep, and since the Orient cannot be known without his mediation, it is also true that Oriental writing itself ought not to be taken in whole. This is Sacy’s introduction to his theory of fragments, a common Romantic concern. Not only are Oriental literary productions essentially alien to the European; they also do not contain a sustained enough interest, nor are they written with enough “taste and critical spirit,” to merit publication except as extracts (pour mériter d’être publiés autrement que par extrait). Therefore the Orientalist is required to present the Orient by a series of representative fragments, fragments republished, explicated, annotated, and surrounded with still more fragments. For such a presentation a special genre is required: the chrestomathy, which is where in Sacy’s case the usefulness and interest of Orientalism are most directly and profitably displayed. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 344

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘chrestomathy’ as the genre through which Orientalist scholarship presented the Orient as representative fragments.
• XREF: Connects to the broader Orientalism toolkit — the fragment/whole logic recurs in later readings on how the ‘Orient’ is mediately constructed.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 344