Debased Oriental Food and Medicine as an Apology for Imperial Domination in O’Donovan’s Travelogue

One of literary genres which has recently attracted the attention of literary critics is travel writing in particular English travelogues written in the nineteenth century when British Empire reached to its highest pitch. The popularity of the genre among scholars of travel studies hinges on Edwards Said’s Orientalism in which he not only problematizes the genre’s supposedly truth-claim and innocence, but also detects its complicity with Western Empire-building enterprises. Moreover, he contends that thegenre is rife with asymmetrical binary logic of Self/Traveler and Other/Travelees which provides an apology for travelees’ domination. In this regard, by building on Said’s Orientalism as its critical framework, the current article endeavors to illustrate how Edmund O’Donovan in his travelogue entitled The Merv Oasis: Travels and Adventures (188) via debasing Oriental food as well as Oriental folk medicine implicitly seeks to legitimize British dominance in his contact zone i.e. Merv

کلیدواژه ها:

Travel writing ، Food ، Medicine ، Binary Logic ، Travelees ، Orientalism