Orientalism Versus Occidentalism: Literary and Cultural Imaging Between France and Iran Since the Islamic Revolution

by Laetitia Nanquette

Overview

This book highlights the role of cultural representations and perceptions, such as when Iran is represented in the French media as a rogue state obsessed with its nuclear programme, and when France is portrayed in the Iranian media as a decadent and imperialist country. Here, Laetitia Nanquette examines the functions, processes, and mechanisms of stereotyping and imagining the "other" that have pervaded the literary traditions of France and Iran when writing about each other. She furthermore analyzes Franco-Iranian relations by exploring the literary traditions of this relationship, the ways in which these have affected individual authors, and how they reflect socio-political realities. With themes that feed into popular debates about the nature of Orientalism and Occidentalism, and how the two interact, this book will be vital for researchers of Middle Eastern literature and its relationship with writings from the West, as well as those working on the cultures of the Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784537050
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/30/2017
Series:	International Library of Cultural Studies
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Laetitia Nanquette is a Vice-Chancellor Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. In 2011-12, she was a Fulbright Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University. She also holds a PhD. in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for which she received the 2011 Honorable Mention of the Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize from the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies.

Table of Contents

Notes on transliteration and translation vi

List of tables vii

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 How can anybody be Persian? French texts on Iran 25

2 Contesting Iran: Iranian texts written in French 56

3 The Little Satan: Iranian texts on France 95

4 Forever in-between: the Persian literature of exile 118

5 Overcoming Othering: French and Persian hybrid texts 141

Conclusion 164

Appendix 1 List and summary of texts 170

Appendix 2 People interviewed in the course of writing this book 184

Notes 186

Bibliography 217

Index 248