ABSTRACT
Like their British contemporaries, the French poets of the early nineteenth century were interested in the problem of representation in poetry, especially as it related to the portrayal of the Islamic Middle East. This and other common preoccupations seem to me of greater significance than the differences between French and English approaches to orientalism during this period. For example, Lisa Lowe's analysis of these differences concludes that
Such an argument is valuable as an antidote to Edward Said's presentation of a totalizing, monolithic orientalism, but the exceptions to it are numerous, especially in poetry. In important respects, both Thalaba the Destroyer and The Revolt of Islam could, for instance, fit within Lowe's model of French orientalism — Thalaba for its reliance on "the previous literary tradition of orientalism," and The Revolt of Islam for the way its "allegories of otherness [...] displace the problems of colonial encounter." Certainly neither of these texts directly represents colonial relationships between England and the East, despite the obvious importance of colonialism to both texts.
