ABSTRACT
Edward Said argued that Western depictions of the Middle East have always reaffirmed Western values and the West’s assumed superiority. Western depictions of Islamic and Arabian culture and people, according to Said, have done this consistently, and thus have had a lasting influence on contemporary foreign policy toward the Middle East. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, however, Robert Burton makes numerous references to Eastern intellectual authorities that in no way disparage or demonize the Middle East, and he frequently mentions their ideas, attitudes, and cultural practices alongside those of England and even classical Greece and Rome. Burton’s Anatomy, therefore, presents a utopian intellectual history that orthopedically corrects Said’s master narrative about negative beliefs and attitudes about the people and cultures of the East.
