Aspects of Orientalism in Lawrence Durrell’s Novel Justine (1957)

Abstract

This study aims at examining and analysing Durrell Lawrence’s Justine as a fictional novel from an Orientalist scope. It attempts to explore the western perception regarding the East by addressing the question of how the Orient was depicted in the novel through shedding light on some traits and aspects as well as extracting images about the place and its population that have been hinted at this literary narrative. Thus, historical, descriptive and analytical approaches are adopted in this paper. This dissertation consists in two chapters, the first chapter includes a general background of the concept of Orientalism which is considered as the defining point in the course of Oriental studies along with a focus on travel writing, followed by the background of the writer that affected his perception while the second chapter is concerned with the analytical part that displays how the notion of Orientalism is demonstrated in Durrell’s literary work. In the end, it can be said that Lawrence Durrell’s Justine was like the earliest Orientalist narratives that presented the Orient as an exotic and mysterious land populated by uncivilized and backwardinferiors.