Between the book and the lamp: imaginative geographies of Egypt, 1849-50

Author: Gregory D.

Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 20, Number 1, March 1995 , pp. 29-57(29)

Publisher: Royal Geographical Society

Key:

- Free Content

- New Content

- Subscribed Content

- Free Trial Content

Abstract:

This essay compares the imaginative geographies of Egypt produced by Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert as they travelled up the Nile Valley and back to Cairo in 1849-50. Their experiences are used to emphasize the physicality (rather than merely the textuality) of travel writing. The differences between their imaginative geographies and in particular between their representations of landscape, space and people, illuminate the complex and fractured formation of Orientalism as a constellation of power, knowledge and spatiality, and its entanglements with patriarchy, sexuality and various colonialisms.

Keywords: Egypt; imaginative geographies; Orientalism; travel writing

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Free content The full text is free.

View now: