Interpreting the Orient, Travellers in Egypt and the Near East.

Condition : very good, minor signs of shelf wear.
Illustrations : some black and white illustrations.

Egypt and the Near East have enchanted many people over the centuries. Western travellers have visited the region for a variety of reasons: in search of knowledge, power, diplomacy and trade, for pleasure and adventure, on pilgrimage, to plunder and discover the exotic - or sometimes simply to discover themselves. Some were more influenced than others by what they saw, bringing back tangible evidence of their visits in the form of antiquities or other collectibles; many used their observations and experiences for literary and artistic purposes. This collection of papers originates from the conference 'Travellers to Egypt and the Near East' held at St Catherine's College, Oxford in July 1997. They are arranged roughly in chronological order - although because of the many common themes running through them, a strict order according to a single criterion has proved almost impossible. In addition to chronological order, the reader will detect a number of common themes - religion, gender, economics, colonialism, perceptions of literature and art and so on - which haunt the essays and form interconnected networks between them. The articles included in this volume range from those on Carl Haag and Gertrude Bell to gender politics in a colonial context. These essays offer a fascinating range of perspectives on a set of historical, literary and cultural relationships that will surely continue to be debated in the twenty-first century.
Paul Starkey studied Arabic and Persian at Oxford and currently teaches at Durham University. He is the author of From the Ivory Tower: A Critical Study of Tawfiq al-Hakim (1987) and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (1988).
Janet Starkey studied social anthropology in Edinburgh and London and currently teaches material culture at Durham University. She has worked extensively in the museum field and has a particular interest in the ethnography of Egypt and Sudan.