Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel

Srinivas Aravamudan here reveals how Oriental tales, pseudo—ethnographies, sexual fantasies, and political satires took Europe by storm during the eighteenth century. Naming this body of fiction Enlightenment Orientalism, he poses a range of urgent questions that uncovers the interdependence of Oriental tales and domestic fiction, thereby challenging standard scholarly narratives about the rise of the novel.
More than mere exoticism, Oriental tales fascinated ordinary readers as well as inte...