Abstract
Desert Passions ambitiously situates itself at the cross-section of feminist cultural history, studies of Orientalism and gender, and recent scholarship in popular romance studies to provide an account of why figures such as the sheik have been so popular in western romance fiction. Teo takes the enormous popularity and controversy surrounding E. M. Hull's The Sheik (1919) as a key example of this trope. This study makes a unique contribution to the study of popular genres by historicising some stock Oriental stereotypes and evidencing the routes through which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century attitudes to the Middle East have become relevant for understanding contemporary popular romance fiction. By tracing the emergence of stereotypes such as the ‘Oriental despot’ and analysing the ways in which Orientalist discourse was feminised by a range of writers, Teo offers a reminder of the importance in reading the back-history of popular romance, a history that can often lead to unexpected places.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 476-478 |
| Number of pages | 3 |
| Journal | Women's History Review |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 11 Nov 2014 |
Keywords
- orientalism
- romance literature
- romance fiction
- oriental stereotypes