image of person or book cover 7260568100000951637.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 Desert Passions : Orientalism and Romance Novels
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The Sheik—E. M. Hull’s best-selling novel that became a wildly popular film starring Rudolph Valentino—kindled “sheik fever” across the Western world in the 1920s. A craze for all things romantically “Oriental” swept through fashion, film, and literature, spawning imitations and parodies without number. While that fervor has largely subsided, tales of passion between Western women and Arab men continue to enthrall readers of today’s mass-market romance novels. In this groundbreaking cultural history, Hsu-Ming Teo traces the literary lineage of these desert romances and historical bodice rippers from the twelfth to the twenty-first century and explores the gendered cultural and political purposes that they have served at various historical moments.

'Drawing on “high” literature, erotica, and popular romance fiction and films, Teo examines the changing meanings of Orientalist tropes such as crusades and conversion, abduction by Barbary pirates, sexual slavery, the fear of renegades, the Oriental despot and his harem, the figure of the powerful Western concubine, and fantasies of escape from the harem. She analyzes the impact of imperialism, decolonization, sexual liberation, feminism, and American involvement in the Middle East on women’s Orientalist fiction. Teo suggests that the rise of female-authored romance novels dramatically transformed the nature of Orientalism because it feminized the discourse; made white women central as producers, consumers, and imagined actors; and revised, reversed, or collapsed the binaries inherent in traditional analyses of Orientalism.' (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Texas,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      University of Texas Press ,
      2012 .
      image of person or book cover 7260568100000951637.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 1vp.
      ISBN: 9780292739390 (electronic bk.), 0292739397 (electronic bk.)

Works about this Work

Sheik-In All Over Juliet Flesch , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 11 no. 1 2014; (p. 249-251)

— Review of Desert Passions : Orientalism and Romance Novels Hsu-Ming Teo , 2012 single work criticism
Sheik-In All Over Juliet Flesch , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 11 no. 1 2014; (p. 249-251)

— Review of Desert Passions : Orientalism and Romance Novels Hsu-Ming Teo , 2012 single work criticism
Last amended 2 Jun 2014 13:13:44
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