Robert Browning as an Orientalist in Ferishtah's Fancies
Journal Title: Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi - Year 2017, Vol 57, Issue 1
Abstract
Orientalism, according to Edward Said, is a Western fantasy which is not based on observation but on dreams, fantasies and assumptions of the West; and this makes it a fabricated construct. As Said argues in the introduction of Orientalism (1978), "[t]he Orient [is] almost a European invention, and ha[s] been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences"(1). "Victorian Orientalism" marks the contemporary taste of the English. Publications of Richard F. Burton's successful translation of the Arabian Nights in 1884 and Edward Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubáiyát can be seen as two examples of Victorian Orientalism. Because of this interest in the Orient, literature has become one of the major areas in which Orientalism is directly represented. Thus, Robert Browning's Ferishtah's Fancies (1884) can be considered as another example of Victorian Orientalist literature since he probably wrote it under the influence of these Orientalist works. Browning's book of poetry was published in 1884, and it sold very well due to this fashion of Orientalism. Although considered to be a minor work of Browning, this work is significant in illustrating the interest in the East. This book consists of didactic tales which are told by a Persian "dervish-to-be." Ferishtah of the title is an imaginary sage interpreting the world by "reading the signs of the physical universe, finding the moral meaning of events, and then making stories that teach spiritual truth" (Mermin). This stereotypical "dervish" figure shows how Browning constructed this fictional Orientalist world.
Authors and Affiliations
Pelin KUT BELENLİ
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