Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature

Mary Roberts

Published by Duke University Press 2007

Intimate Outsiders

The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature

Mary Roberts
Edited by: Nicholas Thomas

In the series Objects/Histories

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822390459

Overview
Contents

About this book

Comparative study of 19th-century representations of Ottoman harems that considers both the tradition of British paintings and writings about harems as well as the perspectives of Ottoman women who commissioned their own harem portraits.

Author / Editor information

Mary Roberts is the John Schaeffer Associate Professor in British Art at the University of Sydney. She is a coeditor of Orientalism’s Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

“This is an outstanding example of a truly interdisciplinary study, integrating painting, photography, travel narrative, and especially harem portraiture. Mary Roberts describes encounters between women—both British travelers and the women of Istanbul and Cairo harems—in a refreshing, innovative analysis of the historical and imaginary workings of harem imagery as forms of cross-cultural exchanges and interactions.”—Julie F. Codell, editor of Imperial Co-Histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press

“Transforming debates about Orientalism, gender, and cultural and political agency, Mary Roberts writes with beguiling simplicity about complicated subjects, taking her readers through a potentially bewildering maze of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural material with a voice both authoritative and accessible.”—Reina Lewis, author of Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel, and the Ottoman Harem

“Roberts hits all the important marks, and hits them well: political agency; gender roles; the ways in which the harem both fostered and smothered particular types of female power; the ways in which the encounter between westerner and oriental provided the latter an occasion to orchestrate what it was that was on display. All in and of themselves important–and complicated–questions, ones that too often have been treated superficially or unimaginatively. Here we get them all, with care and subtlety–and in a package that makes for surprisingly enjoyable reading.”

-- K. E. Fleming Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

“The intimacy Roberts describes in this excellent book is exciting because it provides an alternative to the distancing and empowering notion of orientalism advocated by Said. . . . The stories told in Intimate Outsiders form a significant contribution to the history of painting in nineteenth-century Istanbul, and to the history of international networks among women of privileged social classes. What else they might mean will depend on what, if anything, is able to succeed ‘orientalism’ as a tool for the political analysis of global culture.”

-- Nicholas Tromans Art History

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: Intimate Outsiders Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1. John Frederick Lewis’s Harem Paintings
Chapter One. The Languid Lotus-Eater Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Chapter Two. “Mr Lewis’s Oriental Paradises” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
Part 2. British Women’s Travelogues
Chapter Three. Pleasures in Detail Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter Four. Being Seen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
Chapter Five. Sartorial Adventures and Satiric Narratives Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
Part 3. Harem Portraiture
Chapter Six. The Politics of Portraiture behind the Veil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
Chapter Seven. Oriental Dreams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 248
Illustrations
- Other: 39 illustrations (incl. 32 in color)

eBook

Published: December 10, 2007
ISBN: 9780822390459