Enlightenment Orientalism

“With flair and fascination, Srinivas Aravamudan intervenes in a growing debate about the complex role played by the configuration of Orientalist ‘knowledges’—fictional, phantasmatic, political, moral—in the sage archive of the Enlightenment. At once an elaborate mise-en-scène and a form of mediation, the Orientalist text reveals the Enlightenment to be extravagantly caught up in the tendentious play of differences available to its social and cultural imaginary.”

“By destabilizing and, paradoxically, enlarging our understanding of the rise of the novel, Aravamudan makes an extraordinary contribution to eighteenth-century studies and to English and French literary history. This book is as exciting as it is useful, featuring truly excellent analyses of individual texts and writers. Without question, Enlightenment Orientalism is an illuminating, persuasive, and provocative revaluation of eighteenth-century fiction.”