Original scientific paper

Aziyadé: Pierre Loti’s Oriental Imagery

Sanja Šoštarić ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

Abstract

The introductory part of this article gives an overview of Pierre Loti’s literary fortuna: he quickly gained fame and became the youngest member of the French Academy, only to be strenuously attacked after his death and subsequently almost completely forgotten.
Loti’s oeuvre is largely inspired by his journeys, which gave him the opportunity to get to know many foreign countries and cultures. For this reason, imagology – whose main task is to analyse stereotype images about others (hetero-image) and about oneself (self-image) –is chosen as the theoretical and methodological foundation of the analysis of Loti’s first novel Aziyadé (1879). The analysis includes lexical, structural and semiotic level, following the methodology established by the French comparatist and imagologist Daniel-Henri Pageaux. The lexical analysis of Aziyadé pays special attention to the use of exotic names, words in Turkish and word-phantasms. The second level of analysis focuses on the relationship of the narrator with his own and with a foreign culture which can be observed through the spatiotemporal connections and relationships between and among the characters. The novel is also analysed as a document of the Turkish culture in the 1870s. In the third, extra-textual level of analysis, this novel is placed in the socio-historical context of French imperialist policy and colonialist expansion of the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as in the context of Loti’s relations with the Turkish culture.

Keywords

Pierre Loti; Aziyadé; imagery; oriental imaginary; Turkey

Hrčak ID:

188605

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/188605

Publication date:

3.10.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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