Orientalism (64 page)

98
.
Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
, trans, and ed. Francis Steegmuller (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973), pp. 44–5. See Gustave Flaubert,
Correspondance
, ed. Jean Bruneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), 1: 542.

99
.
This is the argument presented in Carl H. Becker,
Das Erbe der Antike im Orient und Okzident
(Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1931).

100
.
See Louis Massignon,
La Passion d’al-Hosayn-ibn-Mansour al-Hallaj
(Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1922).

101
.
Abdel Malek, “Orientalism in Crisis,” p. 112.

102
.
H. A. R. Gibb,
Modern Trends in Islam
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. 7.

103
.
Gibb,
Area Studies Reconsidered
, pp. 12, 13.

104
.
Bernard Lewis, “The Return of Islam,”
Commentary
, January 1976, pp. 39–49.

105
.
See Daniel Lerner and Harold Lasswell, eds.,
The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951).

106
.
Morroe Berger,
The Arab World Today
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1962), p. 158.

107
.
There is a compendium of such attitudes listed and criticized in Maxime Rodinson,
Islam and Capitalism
, trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).

108
.
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, “Retreat from the Secular Path? Islamic Dilemmas of Arab Politics,”
Review of Politics
28, no. 4 (October 1966): 475.

1
.
Gustave Flaubert,
Bouvard et Pécuchet
, vol. 2 of
Oeuvres
, ed. A. Thibaudet and R. Dumesnil (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), p. 985.

2
.
There is an illuminating account of these visions and utopias in Donald G. Charlton,
Secular Religions in France, 1815–1870
(London: Oxford University Press, 1963).

3
.
M. H. Abrams,
Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971), p. 66.

4
.
For some illuminating material see John P. Nash, “The Connection of Oriental Studies with Commerce, Art, and Literature During the 18th–19th Centuries,”
Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society Journal
15 (1930): 33–9; also John F. Laffey, “Roots of French Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Lyon,”
French Historical Studies
6, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 78–92, and R. Leportier,
L’Orient Porte des Indes
(Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1970). There is a great deal of information in Henri Omont,
Missions archéologiques françaises en Orient aux XVII
^e
et XVIII
^e
siècles
, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1902), and in Margaret T. Hodgen,
Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), as well as in Norman
Daniel,
Islam, Europe and Empire
(Edinburgh: University Press, 1966). Two indispensable short studies are Albert Hourani, “Islam and the Philosophers of History,”
Middle Eastern Studies
3, no. 3 (April 1967): 206–68, and Maxime Rodinson, “The Western Image and Western Studies of Islam,” in
The Legacy of Islam
, ed. Joseph Schacht and C. E. Bosworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 9–62.

5
.
P. M. Holt, “The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale,” in
Historians of the Middle East
, ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 302. See also Holt’s
The Study of Modern Arab History
(London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1965).

6
.
The view of Herder as populist and pluralist is advocated by Isaiah Berlin,
Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas
(New York: Viking Press, 1976).

7
.
For a discussion of such motifs and representations, see Jean Starobinski,
The Invention of Liberty
,
1700–1789
, trans. Bernard C. Smith (Geneva: Skira, 1964).

8
.
There are a small number of studies on this too-little-investigated subject. Some well-known ones are: Martha P. Conant,
The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century
(1908; reprint ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1967); Marie E. de Meester,
Oriental Influences in the English Literature of the Nineteenth Century, Anglistische Forschungen
, no. 46 (Heidelberg, 1915); Byron Porter Smith,
Islam in English Literature
(Beirut: American Press, 1939). See also Jean-Luc Doutrelant, “L’Orient tragique au XVIII
^e
siècle,”
Revue des Sciences Humaines
146 (April-June 1972): 255–82.

9
.
Michel Foucault,
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), pp. 138, 144. See also François Jacob,
The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity
, trans. Betty E. Spillmann (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), p. 50 and passim, and Georges Canguilhem,
La Connaissance de la vie
(Paris: Gustave-Joseph Vrin, 1969), pp. 44–63.

10
.
See John G. Burke, “The Wild Man’s Pedigree: Scientific Method and Racial Anthropology,” in
The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism
, ed. Edward Dudley and Maximillian E. Novak (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), pp. 262–8. See also Jean Biou, “Lumières et anthropophagie,”
Revue des Sciences Humaines
146 (April-June 1972): 223–34.

11
.
Henri Dehérain,
Silvestre de Sacy: Ses Contemporains et ses disciples
(Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1938), p. 111.

12
.
For these and other details see ibid., pp. i–xxxiii.

13
.
Duc de Broglie, “Éloge de Silvestre de Sacy,” in Sacy,
Mélanges de littérature orientale
(Paris: E. Ducrocq, 1833), p. xii.

14
.
Bon Joseph Dacier,
Tableau historique de l’érudition française, ou Rapport sur les progrès de l’histoire et de la littérature ancienne depuis 1789
(Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1810), pp. 23, 35, 31.

15
.
Michel Foucault,
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), pp. 193–4.

16
.
Broglie, “Éloge de Silvestre de Sacy,” p. 107.

17
.
Sacy,
Mélanges de littérature orientale
, pp. 107, 110, 111–12.

18
.
Silvestre de Sacy,
Chrestomathie arabe, ou Extraits de divers écrivains arabes, tant en prose qu’en vers, avec une traduction française et des notes, à l’usage des élèves de l’École royale et spéciale des langues orientales vivantes
(vol. 1, 1826; reprint ed., Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1973), p. viii.

19
.
For the notions of “supplementarity,” “supply,” and “supplication,” see Jacques Derrida,
De la grammatologie
(Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967), p. 203 and passim.

20
.
For a partial list of Sacy’s students and influence see Johann W. Fück,
Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts
(Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), pp. 156–7.

21
.
Foucault’s characterization of an archive can be found in
The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language
, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith and Rupert Sawyer (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 79–131. Gabriel Monod, one of Renan’s younger and very perspicacious contemporaries, remarks that Renan was by no means a revolutionary in linguistics, archaeology, or exegesis, yet because he had the widest and the most precise learning of anyone in his period, he was its most eminent representative (
Renan, Taine, Michelet
[Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1894], pp. 40–1). See also Jean-Louis Dumas, “La Philosophie de l’histoire de Renan,”
Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale
77, no. 1 (January–March 1972): 100–28.

22
.
Honoré de Balzac,
Louis Lambert
(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, n.d.), p. 4.

23
.
Nietzsche’s remarks on philology are everywhere throughout his works. See principally his notes for “Wir Philologen” taken from his notebooks for the period January–July 1875, translated by William Arrowsmith as “Notes for ‘We Philologists,’ ”
Arion
, N. S. ½ (1974): 279–380; also the passages on language and perspectivism in
The Will to Power
, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).

24
.
Ernest Renan,
L’Avenir de la science: Pensées de 1848
, 4th ed. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1890), pp. 141, 142–5, 146, 148, 149.

25
.
Ibid., p. xiv and passim.

26
.
The entire opening chapter—bk. 1, chap. 1—of the
Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques
, in
Oeuvres complètes
, ed. Henriette Psichari (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947–61), 8: 143–63, is a virtual encyclopedia of race prejudice directed against Semites (i.e., Moslems and Jews). The rest of the treatise is sprinkled generously with the same notions, as are many of Renan’s other works, including
L’Avenir de la science
, especially Renan’s notes.

27
.
Ernest Renan,
Correspondance; 1846–1871
(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1926), 1: 7–12.

28
.
Ernest Renan,
Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse
, in
Oeuvres complètes
, 2: 892. Two works by Jean Pommier treat Renan’s mediation between religion and philology in valuable detail:
Renan, d’après des documents inédits
(Paris: Perrin, 1923), pp. 48–68, and
La Jeunesse cléricale d’Ernest Renan
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1933). There is a more recent account in J. Chaix-Ruy,
Ernest Renan
(Paris: Emmanuel Vitte, 1956), pp. 89–111. The standard description—done more in terms of Renan’s religious vocation—is still valuable also: Pierre Lasserre,
La Jeunesse d’Ernest Renan: Histoire de la crise religieuse au XIX
^e
siècle
, 3 vols. (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1925). In vol. 2, pp. 50–166 and 265–98 are useful on the relations between philology, philosophy, and science.

29
.
Ernest Renan, “Des services rendus aux sciences historiques par la philologie,” in
Oeuvres complètes
8: 1228.

30
.
Renan,
Souvenirs
, p. 892.

31
.
Foucault,
The Order of Things
, pp. 290–300. Along with the discrediting of the Edenic origins of language, a number of other events—the Deluge, the building of the Tower Babel—also were discredited as explanations. The most comprehensive history of theories of linguistic origin is Arno Borst,
Der Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Volker
, 6 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1957–63).

32
.
Quoted by Raymond Schwab,
La Renaissance orientale
(Paris: Payot, 1950), p. 69. On the dangers of too quickly succumbing to generalities about Oriental discoveries, see the reflections of the distinguished contemporary Sinologist Abel Rémusat,
Mélanges postumes d’histoire et littérature orientales
(Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1843), p. 226 and passim.

33
.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Biographia Literaria
, chap. 16, in
Selected Poetry and Prose of Coleridge
, ed. Donald A. Stauffer (New York: Random House, 1951), pp. 276–7.

34
.
Benjamin Constant,
Oeuvres
, ed. Alfred Roulin (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 78.

35
.
Abrams,
Natural Supernaturalism
, p. 29.

36
.
Renan,
De l’origine du langage, in Oeuvres complètes
, 8: 122.

37
.
Renan, “De la part des peuples sémitiques dans l’histoire de la civilisation,” in
Oeuvres complètes
, 2: 320.

38
.
Ibid., p. 333.

39
.
Renan, “Trois Professeurs au Collège de France: Étienne Quatremère,” in
Oeuvres complètes
, 1: 129. Renan was not wrong about Quatremère, who had a talent for picking interesting subjects to study and then making them quite uninteresting. See his essays “Le Goût des livres chez les orientaux” and “Des sciences chez les arabes,” in his
Mélanges d’histoire et de philologie orientales
(Paris: E. Ducrocq, 1861), pp. 1–57.

40
.
Honoré de Balzac,
La Peau de chagrin
, vol. 9 (
Études philosophiques
1) of
La Comédie humaine
, ed. Marcel Bouteron (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 39; Renan,
Histoire générale des langues sémitiques
, p. 134.

41
.
See, for instance,
De l’origine du langage
, p. 102, and
Histoire générale
, p. 180.