ABSTRACT
It is becoming commonplace for modern readers of medieval literature to refer to Chaucer's “Orientalism.” 1 There are reasons, however, why one might hesitate to do so. To begin with, Said posits a twofold timeline for the rise of Orientalism, with one starting point in the late eighteenth century and another at the dawn of time. 2 Since only the latter, far less specific form of Orientalism could be found in medieval texts, the term may be too vague to be useful. 3 There is, moreover, another obstacle in the path of the effort to speak of medieval Orientalism, located in Said's description of Orientalism as a “discourse,” a formulation he presents as crucial: “without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient.” 4 Said goes on to draw upon Foucault's theory of discourse (especially as articulated in The Order of Things) not only to define Orientalism but also to identify paradigmatic manifestations of it in the writings of nineteenth-century British colonial administrators, some of whom were also self-identified academic “Orientalists.” 5 Said himself specifies, at least initially, that a “discourse,” in the Foucauldian sense, is a specifically post-Enlightenment phenomenon. His subsequent use of the term, however, is less scrupulous; for example, Said refers to the “discourse” of Orientalism in Dante's portrait of Muhammad in the Inferno. 6 It is unsurprising, then, that those who employ Said's theory use the term discourse with comparable vagueness.
