Some nineteenth-century writers engaged the Orient aesthetically without reducing it to documentary knowledge

Evidence

The paramount importance of Nerval and Flaubert to a study such as this of the Orientalist mind in the nineteenth century is that they produced work that is connected to and depends upon the kind of Orientalism we have so far discussed, yet remains independent from it. … Their egos never absorbed the Orient, nor totally identified the Orient with documentary and textual knowledge of it (with official Orientalism, in short). — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 461

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between ‘official Orientalism’ (documentary, codifying knowledge) and an independent aesthetic engagement with the Orient — a key conceptual scaffold.
• XREF: This distinction between official/appropriating Orientalism and a freer aesthetic engagement sets up the later Islamophobia readings on representation and the construction of the Other.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 461