Ideological Manifestations: An Analysis of Alexander William Kinglake’s Journey to Ottoman Syria

Abstract

This paper will look into A. W. Kinglake’s travel book Eothen (First published in 1844) focusing on the episodes of his journey concerning Greater Syria in particular in an attempt to critique it as a work of pure ideology whereby the region is portrayed as a lawless jungle dominated by oppression and violence taking into consideration the socio-political environment of the country at the time. It is a contextual reading of the text as an endeavour to point out to the author’s failure in capturing the entirety of Syria’s reality and in giving it justice by focusing on transient situations and magnifying them while ignoring all that is positive. Constructed upon the extremity of a utopic/dystopic society, that is of West and East, Eothen does not manifest any form of positive cross-cultural encounter. On the contrary, it affirms the separation between a European progressive civilized self and a degenerate other.