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William Beckford - The Elusive Orientalist (Paperback)
Loot Price: R2,927
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William Beckford - The Elusive Orientalist (Paperback)
Series: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2016:11
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The writer and aesthete William Beckford (1760-1844) was a
fascinating embodiment of the sublime egotist. Because of his
extravagance, fabulousness and enigmatic nature, biographers have
alternately presented him as an object of fascination or dismissed
him as an insolent and deceptive character. Laurent Chatel provides
an innovative reassessment of Beckford by presenting 'elusiveness'
as the defining motif for understanding both the writer and his
work. Laurent Chatel opens his analysis by exploring the author's
fascination for the East, which informed several of his
multi-layered works such as 'The long story', 'Suite des contes
arabes' and Vathek. By reconnecting him with the eighteenth-century
aesthetic of translation and reappropriation of the Arabian nights,
Chatel shows how Beckford's Orientalism was key to his elusiveness
and presents him as a fabulist who supplemented existing tales with
touches of wonder and horror. In further chapters Chatel explores
his lack of recognition as a man of letters - whether desired or
not. Through an analysis of the arguably limited reception of
Beckford's works, in particular in France both during his lifetime
and immediately after his death, we see how his deliberate
elusiveness of style was constitutive of his identity. In his
groundbreaking repositioning of Beckford, Laurent Chatel provides a
new framework for further explorations of his work and their rich
overlay of intertextual presences.
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