Popular Orientalism: Somerset Maugham in Mainland Southeast Asia
School of Creative Arts and Humanities, Charles Darwin University, Darwin NT 0909, Australia
Academic Editor: Albrecht Classen
Humanities 2016, 5(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5010013
Received: 21 December 2015 / Revised: 29 January 2016 / Accepted: 2 February 2016 / Published: 5 February 2016
Based on his experiences during a journey through mainland Southeast Asia in 1923, Somerset Maugham wrote a book of colonial travel entitled The Gentleman in the Parlour. As the work of one of the most popular writers of the twentieth century, Maugham’s travelogue both expressed and helped to shape contemporary thinking about Southeast Asia and Western imperialism. Focusing especially on his representations of Burma and Cambodia, an analysis is presented of Maugham’s book in the light of postcolonial scholarship, especially the theoretical insights developed under the inspiration of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Despite its pretensions to be apolitical, Maugham’s travel book is shown to be a repository of Western colonial ideas and attitudes, integrally involved in the circulation of the prevailing European discourse of high imperialism. As such, it is a valuable resource for historians and other scholars who wish to understand the way that discourse worked at the level of popular literature.
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Keywords:
Orientalism; British imperialism; Maugham; Burma; Cambodia; travel
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MDPI and ACS Style
Doran, C. Popular Orientalism: Somerset Maugham in Mainland Southeast Asia. Humanities 2016, 5, 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/h5010013
AMA Style
Doran C. Popular Orientalism: Somerset Maugham in Mainland Southeast Asia. Humanities. 2016; 5(1):13. https://doi.org/10.3390/h5010013
Chicago/Turabian StyleDoran, Christine. 2016. "Popular Orientalism: Somerset Maugham in Mainland Southeast Asia" Humanities 5, no. 1: 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/h5010013
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