Orientalism in Lord Byron's Turkish Tale The Giaour

Abstract

This dissertation sheds the light on one of the most challenging works in English Literature. It examines the poetry of Lord Byron, and more specifically The Giaour, as a significant instance of Romantic poetry with an Orientalist stance. Combining a historical with an analytical approach, it seeks to break the metaphor of an Orient only Orientalized and to expose a European rather hypnotized by the Orient to choose it as a career. It reads The Giaour in the light of Edward Said‟s Orientalism to assess Byron‟s position. Byron‟s orientation was the exotic provinces of the Orient that affected his poetry and his life on the whole and led to the emersion of a different type of Orientalism.