Childe Harold's Journey to the East and "Authenticity"

Abstract

This essay deals with the notion of orientalist discourse in Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Concentrating on the dialectical attitudes towards the "Orient" in Byron's poem the writers try to show, through a contrapuntal textual analysis, how signs emerge of a somewhat stereotypical and often monolithic Orient. It is argued that the work's claim on the authenticity of the representations of the East is a subtle textual strategy. This seems to be true despite the existence of seemingly more favourable views towards "Orientals", especially in the footnotes, compared to Turkish Tales. Central to the study is the idea that similar discursive practices also seem to influence most of Byron's critics, which include contemporary scholars who have conducted numerous forms of textual analysis through differing theoretical approaches.