Page 255 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 21: Edward Said’s Crisis [In Orientalism]: Detailed Study

21.6 Key-Words Notes

1. Defamiliarization : The Russian formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky uses the term ostranenie,
usually translated as ‘making strange’ or ‘defamiliarization’, to denote
what he sees as the primary function of literary texts—to make the
familiar unfamiliar, to renew the old, or make the habitual appear fresh
or strange.
2. Deixis : A term from linguistics, referring to the use of words concerning the
place and time of utterance, e.g. ‘this’, ‘here’.
3. Dénouement : (Fr: ‘unknotting’) either the events following the climax of a plot, or the
resolution of this plot’s complications at the end of a short story, novel
or play.
21.7 Review Questions

1. To what extent is Said a Foucauldian? What other theorists does he bring into his analysis, and
how does he employ their ideas either to qualify or supplement his own and Foucault's
framework? What reason does Said offer on page 1996 (bottom) for not simply sticking with
one theoretical framework rather than integrating the work of several theorists?
2. Said wants to move away from theories that he believes have construed the literary text as an
object apart from the world, from everyday reality. How, according to Said, does Paul Ricoeur's
analysis of the opposition between speech and texts reproduce the problem that Said wants to
avoid?
3. What is the Scope of Orientalism"? Explain .
4. Discuss the Orientalist Structures and Restructures."
Answers: Self-Assessment
1. (i)(c) (ii)(b) (iii)(b)

21.8 Further Readings

1. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. Reproduction culturelle et reproduction sociale. Social
Science Information. April 10: 45-79. 1990b.
2. The Logic of Practice, translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Polity Press. 1993a.
Sociology in Question, translated by Richard Nice. London: Sage Publications.
3. Læon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in
Europe, trans. Edmund Howard (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
4. Derek Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843-1943: Church
and Politics in the Near East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
5. A. L. Tibawi, British Interests in Palestine, 1800-1901 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1961), p. 5.-285-
6. Gérard de Nerval, Oeuvres, ed. Albert Béguin and Jean Richet (Paris: Gallimard,
1960), 1:933.
7. Hugo, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:580.
8. Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman (1825; reprint ed., London: J. M. Dent, 1914), pp.
38-9.
9. See Albert Hourani, "'Sir Hamilton Gibb, 1895-1971'", Proceedings of the British
Academy 58 (1972):495.

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