Faculty Advisor
Smith, Katherine
Area of Study
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Publication Date
Summer 2018
Abstract
This paper examines the ways in which different texts (crusade chronicles, French epic poems, and crusade sermons) written during the early Crusades and Crusader States created a coherent portrait of the East. It compare the ways Edward Said’s Orientalism, which examines colonial texts, and the effect their portrait of the East had on European identity, with texts of the Crusades. These texts cast the Orient into a place that was the antithesis of Christendom, defining what it meant to have a Christian, European white identity. This was done through representations of: threatening sexuality, skin color, unlimited wealth, and a fictional depiction of Islam as a mirror to Christianity. In addition, Crusader Orientalism cast the East into a temporally static place, where the Biblical past is closer to the present than it is in Europe. Together this set of beliefs became extremely popular in Christian writings of the East and worked to define themselves on the inverse of the Other as well as shaping modern ideas about geography and race.
Recommended Citation
Schaller, Henry, "Crusader Orientalism: Depictions of the Eastern Other in Medieval Crusade Writings" (2018). Summer Research. 327.
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research/327
Rights
Publisher
University of Puget Sound
Included in
Ethnic Studies Commons, European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, History of Christianity Commons, History of Religion Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Medieval History Commons, Social History Commons