This book explores the appropriation of Oriental imagery within Danish and Norwegian 19th century nation-building. The project queries Edward Said's binary notion of Orientalism and posits a more complex model describing how European counties on the periphery -- Denmark and Norway -- imported oriental imagery from France to position themselves, not against their colonial Other, but in relation to central European nations. Examining Nordic Orientalism across a century in the context of modernisation, urbanisation and democratisation the study furthermore shows how the Romanticists' naive treatment of the Orient was challenged by increased contact with the 'real' Orient.
This book explores the appropriation of Oriental imagery within Danish and Norwegian 19th century nation-building. The project queries Edward Said's binary notion of Orientalism and posits a more complex model describing how European counties on the periphery -- Denmark and Norway -- imported oriental imagery from France to position themselves, not against their colonial Other, but in relation to central European nations. Examining Nordic Orientalism across a century in the context of modernisation, urbanisation and democratisation the study furthermore shows how the Romanticists' naive treatment of the Orient was challenged by increased contact with the 'real' Orient.
Elisabeth Oxfeldt
...timely and of multiple interest [...] an ambitious and important
contribution to the fields of Scandinavian literature and cultural
studies dealing with nationalism and nation-building. It it higly
recommended.- Marina Allemano, University of Alberta, Scandinavian
Studies 79, Issue 1, Spring 2007
This is an intelligently conceived and elegantly written book that
sets out to distinguish the ways in which Orientalism functioned in
the common literary and cultural imagination shared by Denmark and
Norway during the nineteenth century. [...] She (Oxfeldt) has
offered a compelling argument regarding the changing status of
Orientalism in the nineteenth-century literary tradition that
Denmark and Norway share, and given an inspiring example of how
analysis of popular cultural phenomena, such as entertainment
parks, journalism, and world fairs, can enrich understanding of
this literary tradition enormously.- Ellen Rees, University of
Oregon, Scandinavica 46, no. 1, May 2007
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