ABSTRACT
The exotic novel of the nineteenth century is now most often read in terms essentially derived from Edward Said's concept of 'Orientalism'. One of the problems with a hard-line reading of 'Orientalism' is that it suggests a monolithic, hegemonic system that has subsisted relatively unchanged for the entire history of the West's encounter with the Orient. Exotic writing is both the immediate precursor of postcolonial writing, and at the same time always on the verge of being 'colonial literature', proto-imperialist or Orientalist. The metamorphoses of subversive modes within exoticism are partly due to the changing generic conditions of writing in prose. Exotic fiction is confronted with a fundamental choice concerning the nature of its focalization: to adopt the perspective, knowledge and mind-set of a European traveller, or to feign the world-view of the fictive Other. Focalization through the European Self can also permit certain forms of critique and subversion.
