Summary
Edward William Lane, author of An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, named by Said in Orientalism as one of the three inaugural heroes of modern Orientalism in Islamic studies with Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan — builders of the field, creators of a tradition, progenitors of the Orientalist brotherhood — and excerpted in Chapter Two’s first epigraph (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.120, 131 / printed p.111-112, 122).
Details
- Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians is, for Said, a classic of observation because of its style and brilliant details, and a work whose authority within the discourse was such that it was read and cited by Nerval, Flaubert and Richard Burton, its authority used even for village scenes in Syria (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.24, 32 / printed p.15, 23).
- The work is listed among the textual children of Napoleon’s expedition, in the same tradition as Chateaubriand’s Itinéraire, Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient and Flaubert’s Salammbô, bound by their learned reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought forth (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.97 / printed p.88).
- Chapter Two’s first epigraph is Lane’s account of a young man at the wedding procession of a daughter of the seyyid ‘Omar, the Nakeeb el-Ashraf, who had made an incision in his abdomen, drawn out a large portion of his intestines and carried them before him on a silver tray, an act Lane calls, in the passage quoted, “this foolish and disgusting act” (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.120).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Orientalism, Silvestre de Sacy, Ernest Renan, Napoleon Bonaparte