Salt’s A voyage to Abyssinia and travels into the interior of that country: a Postcolonial study
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Date
2022
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Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University
Abstract
This dissertation analyzed the aspects of the Orientalist discourse in Salt’s A voyage to Abyssinia and travels into the interior of that country (1814). The study examined the ways in which Orientalist tropes, stereotypes and power dynamics were constructed and perpetuated in Salt’s travelogue. For its theoretical framework, the study drew to the guidelines set up by Said’s Orientalism (1979), which corroborated this study. The dissertation focused on three major ideas related to the perpetuation of the Western superiority and the imperialistic endeavor in Abyssinia. The first, concerned the binary opposition of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, namely the English and Abyssinians. The second stretched the first idea by focusing on the political state of the ‘Other’ as ‘Inferior’ and ‘Unstable’ compared to the English. The final encompassed the Abyssinian landscape as both ‘exotic’ and ‘dangerous’ to the occupier. Additionally, this study delved into the degree to which the moralizing ideology underlying the ‘Civilizing Mission’ functioned as a means to strengthen and consolidate the English presence in Abyssinia. After analyzing the travelogue looking for displays of Orientalism and to prove that the travel writer was an Orientalist, I came to the conclusion that the travelogue is imbued with such discourse if not fully formulated for that, making of Salt an Orientalist and an advocator of British imperialism in Abyssinia.
Description
55p. ; 30cm(+CD-Rom)
Keywords
Binary opposition, Danger, Exotic, Orientalist discourse, HUMANITIES and RELIGION::Languages and linguistics::Other Germanic languages, Self.
Citation
Literature & Civilization