Orientalism

by

Edward W. Said

Alphonse Lamartine was a French politician and writer of the 19th century. He wrote an account of his travels in the Orient—modern-day Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria—in the 1830s. For Said in Orientalism, Lamartine shows how Orientalist discourse perpetuated itself outside of the academy, because Lamartine prepared for his trip by reading scholarly Orientalist works and, when he didn’t like what he saw in real life on his trip, didn’t hesitate to impose Orientalist theories and ideas on reality.

Alphonse Lamartine Quotes in Orientalism

The Orientalism quotes below are all either spoken by Alphonse Lamartine or refer to Alphonse Lamartine. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The West’s View of the Eastern World Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2, Part 4 Quotes

In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient, or some bit of a previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these. Direct observation or circumstantial description of the Orient are the fictions presented by writing on the Orient, yet invariably these are totally secondary to systematic tasks of another sort. In Lamartine, Nerval, and Flaubert, the Orient is a re-presentation of canonical material guided by an aesthetic and executive will capable of producing interest in the reader.

Related Characters: Edward Said (speaker), Napoleon, Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval
Related Symbols: The Orient
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3, Part 4 Quotes

Thus if the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value. He is seen as the disrupter of Israel’s and the West’s existence, or in another view of the same thing, as a surmountable obstacle to Israel’s creation in 1948. Insofar as this Arab has any history, it is part of the history given him […] by Orientalist tradition, and later, the Zionist tradition. Palestine was seen—by Lamartine and the early Zionists—as an empty desert waiting to burst into bloom; such inhabitants as it had were supposed to be inconsequential nomads possessing no real claim on the land and therefore no cultural or national reality. Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew. In that shadow—because Arabs and Jews are Oriental Semites—can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards the Oriental.

Related Characters: Edward Said (speaker), Alphonse Lamartine
Related Symbols: The Orient
Page Number: 286
Explanation and Analysis:
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Alphonse Lamartine Quotes in Orientalism

The Orientalism quotes below are all either spoken by Alphonse Lamartine or refer to Alphonse Lamartine. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The West’s View of the Eastern World Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2, Part 4 Quotes

In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient, or some bit of a previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these. Direct observation or circumstantial description of the Orient are the fictions presented by writing on the Orient, yet invariably these are totally secondary to systematic tasks of another sort. In Lamartine, Nerval, and Flaubert, the Orient is a re-presentation of canonical material guided by an aesthetic and executive will capable of producing interest in the reader.

Related Characters: Edward Said (speaker), Napoleon, Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval
Related Symbols: The Orient
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3, Part 4 Quotes

Thus if the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value. He is seen as the disrupter of Israel’s and the West’s existence, or in another view of the same thing, as a surmountable obstacle to Israel’s creation in 1948. Insofar as this Arab has any history, it is part of the history given him […] by Orientalist tradition, and later, the Zionist tradition. Palestine was seen—by Lamartine and the early Zionists—as an empty desert waiting to burst into bloom; such inhabitants as it had were supposed to be inconsequential nomads possessing no real claim on the land and therefore no cultural or national reality. Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew. In that shadow—because Arabs and Jews are Oriental Semites—can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards the Oriental.

Related Characters: Edward Said (speaker), Alphonse Lamartine
Related Symbols: The Orient
Page Number: 286
Explanation and Analysis: