Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

235Let us Raise the Threshold of the Missed Encounter: Orientalism as a Missed EncounterThe Orient at large, therefore, vacillates betweenthe West’s contempt for what is familiar and itsshivers of delight inor fear ofnovelty. (Said,Orientalism 59)Read in light of Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, American classicnarratives work as a sequel to and a manifestation of the strong presence of “American HolyLand literature” in the nineteenth-century literary scene. For example, Melville’s preoccupationwith the Orient and its sacred geography allows for the construction of national values in whichtranscendental concepts of liberty, expansionism, and democracy overlap with colonialsettlement. Studying America’s obsession with the past and the bible as an archive of origins,Obenzinger, continuing Said’s argument, points out:While the persistent preoccupation with the Bible and biblical geography stood at theideological core of American colonial expansion, actual travel to Palestine allowedAmericans to contemplate biblical narratives at their source in order to reimagineandeven to re-enactreligio-national myths, allowing them, ultimately, to displace thebiblical Holy Land with the American New Jerusalem. (5; emphasis mine)“The American New Jerusalem” is a construction that dates back to Puritan colonial era. Thisquest of American Holy Land literature to restore the Holy Land, Obenzinger explains, is taintedwith the desire for settler-colonialism and imperial expansionism. This argument furthercomplicates the dynamics of colonialism and imperialism within American discourse of