Time Behind the Veil : The Media, the Middle Ages, and Orientalism Now

Author / Editor
Davis, Kathleen.

Title
Time Behind the Veil : The Media, the Middle Ages, and Orientalism Now

Published
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 105-22.

Description
Contemporary orientalism is based on a paradoxical notion of the Middle Ages as both the precursor of modernity and an unchanging alterity. Davis identifies this paradox in Edward Said's "Orientalism" and Diane Sawyer's television documentary, "Behind the Veil" (1996). Davis argues that MLT, in its depiction of the gendered role the Orient plays in defining Europe and England, reflects a self-aware, medieval orientalism unacknowledged by modern postcolonial theorists.

Alternative Title
Postcolonial Middle Ages.

Chaucer Subjects
Man of Law and His Tale.