Writing and cultural influence : studies in rhetorical history, orientalist discourse, and post-colonial criticism

The Near East has played an important part in the construction of the western cultural tradition from the classical period to the present. Current scholarship on cultural constructs is caught in more challenging implications of critical theory and is, therefore, becoming more and more irregular, interdisciplinary, and multicultural. Although the chapters in this book treat specific historical situations involving the Near East and the Western world, together they constitute a unifying thread that brings together a series of unique frames of a complex picture.