Historical and Perceptual Fallacies in Washington Irving’s Mahomet and His Successors

Abstract

The representation of the Orient and its specificities has always been a matter of serious thought and important outcome in the West. In literature, European and American authors alike tackled the East in terms of history, geography, and culture. This extended essay examines the picture Washington Irving gives in his biography Mahomet and His Successors of the Arabs, Muslims, and their Prophet. It begins by giving reference to Orientalism and its historical and literary branches in addition to the different traditions in biography writing, which will be contrasted in the analytical part to reach thoroughness as well as objectivity in the exposition of the ways literary disposition, religion, and ideology influence Irving’s composition.