Knowledge or use of Oriental languages, history, literature, etc.
A term coined by literary and cultural critic Edward Said to denote a fascination with Asian culture. For Said, it is this fascination, and cultural appropriation, which is real-rather than any actual image of Asian cultures. Modernist poets like Pound and Williams implicitly critique modern society by turning to Asian culture, which they see as foreign and exotic. Viewed as an escape from or alternative to the increasingly mechanized and alienating modern world, the Orient is used as a symbol of a more tranquil life. Modernist poets were attracted by particular characteristics of Asian art, including the affinity with nature, appreciation of the ordinary, and commitment to clean, economic language. Like primitivism, orientalism can often seem patronizing and even racist because it tends to view all Asians and Asian culture stereotypically.
the scholarly knowledge of Asian cultures and languages and people
the quality or customs or mannerisms characteristic of Asian civilizations; "orientalisms can be found in Mozart's operas"
The academic study and knowledge of the Middle East ad Asia that developed during the imperialism of the nineteenth century. Orientalism is a Western approach to understanding the cultures, languages, and religions of the East. Especially in the early studies, the Orient was seen as exotic and romantic, but its inhabitants were regarded as uncivilized and inferior. Although by now these views have bee challenged and changed, they are arguably still prevalent.
Refers to the way in which “The Orient” was and is constructed by the West as a means to claim authority and exercise control over Eastern cultures. The Orient is not a fact, or a specific geographical place; rather, it is the complex layers of knowledge and mythology that have been constructed around Western ideas about the non-West. For example, the way in which North American media characterize the “Middle East” as a place of repressive government regimes and fundamentalist religion glosses over the vast cultural differences between different cultural groups of the region and contributes to the Western assumption that domination of these “backward” nations is legitimate and necessary.
"a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship. [Edward Said
the erroneous Western tendency to view all Asian cultures as a kind of homogenous whole and to place them within an artificial framework that is distinctly opposed to our own (which is also somewhat artificially conceived); i.e., all Westerners are rational and linear, all Asians are non-rational and spatial, etc. Even the most responsible Western scholarship falls prey to this now and again-- to look into another culture is "to look through a glass darkly;" often what we see is our own assumptions reflected back to us.
Orientalism is the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages and peoples by Western scholars. It can also refer to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists.
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward Said that marked the beginnings of post-colonial studies. In his book Said suggests that all discourse, particularly discourse about other cultures, is inherently ideological. Therefore regardless of the subject any historical discourse must be situated within a particular framework whose overall structure is necessarily ideological.