The Orient entered Western knowledge through a fixed archive of literary genres

Evidence

There were the Bible and the rise of Christianity; there were travelers like Marco Polo who charted the trade routes and patterned a regulated system of commercial exchange, and after him Lodovico di Varthema and Pietro della Valle; there were fabulists like Mandeville; there were the redoubtable conquering Eastern movements, principally Islam, of course; there were the militant pilgrims, chiefly the Crusaders. Altogether an internally structured archive is built up from the literature that belongs to these experiences. Out of this comes a restricted number of typical encapsulations: the journey, the history, the fable, the stereotype, the polemical confrontation. These are the lenses through which the Orient is experienced, and they shape the language, perception, and form of the encounter between East and West. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 162

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘internally structured archive’ — a key concept that prefigures Foucault’s archive and how a restricted repertoire of forms shapes what can be perceived.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 162