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Full Description
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Arabic-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire saw a crucial change in attitudes towards sexuality. Notions of 'respectability', 'propriety' and 'sexual morality' were being transformed in literary and cultural discourses, a shift that was related to the gradual rise in anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism. However, contemporary Orientalists such as Sir Richard Burton and T.E. Lawrence were oblivious to certain aspects of this process of cultural reconfiguration. While accounts of male-love poetry (ghazal al-mudhakkar) were being gradually expurgated from the Arab literary heritage, elaborate narratives of Oriental homoerotic desire distinctively characterise the encounters of both Burton and Lawrence with the Arab East.
By comparing their literary and autobiographical accounts of the Arab Orient with contemporary Arabic literature, Feras Alkabani is able to expose this critical disparity in cross-cultural portrayals of sexual morality and homoerotic desire. Alkabani relates the conflicting agendas of contemporary Orientalists and Arab scholars to the shifts in international imperial power relations and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire. His detailed comparative study reveals the significance of homoerotic desire within Orientalist and Arab literary discourses at a time when the meaning and connotations of poetic male-love were undergoing a critical change in Arab culture and literature. It will prove invaluable for those researching Orientalism, nationalism, imperialism and manifestations of homoerotic desire in the fin-de-siècle Middle East.
Contents
Part I:
In the Beginning was the Encounter: Orientalism and the Nahda
Introduction
Sir Richard Burton & T.E. Lawrence: The Snake Charmers of Empire
Chapter One: Orientalism, the Nahda and Intercultural Perceptions of Homoerotic Desire
Part II:
Sir Richard Burton's Arabian Treasures: Oriental Pleasures from Text to Experience
Chapter Two: Sir Richard Burton and The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A New Translation with an 'Other' Interpretation
Chapter Three: The Fictional and the Anthropological in the 'Sotadic Zone' and Beyond: Masquerades of Sorts
Part III:
Homoeroticism and Nationalism in TE Lawrence's Rendition of the Arab Revolt
Chapter Four: The (Un)Changing East: Geopolitical Transitions from Burton to Lawrence
Chapter Five: Homoerotic Masquerade: An Unmasking of Desire
Chapter Six: Orientalist Wish-Fulfilment - Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (or Not?)
Chapter Seven: The Conjuring of a Revolt: Lawrence and Arab Nationalism
Chapter Eight: The Heroic and the Homoerotic: The Conjunction of Two Perspectives
Epilogue
The Seductive Allure of the 'Other' Difference is Sexy
