The Perception of the Orient in T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Abstract

This study aims to examine Thomas Edward Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a momentous instance of the twentieth century English travellers, with an Orientalist viewpoint .Linking the historical approach with an analytical one, it hints the Oriental influence on Lawrence’s piece of writing during the Arab Revolt in the First World War by shedding light on myriad features of the Orient that has been mentioned in Lawrence‘s account. This research opens by addressing one of the marked Postcolonial issues, namely Orientalism, and its main pioneer Edward Said and his contributions, along with an emphasis on the most prominent concepts that shape Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which are important to the next chapter that analyses the oriental aspects and the dramatic events that are described in Lawrence’s work. This dissertation validates that Lawrence‘s Orientalism was a continuation of the western accumulations of decades of negative prejudices.