The Study of the Hungarian as the Anti-Orient in Vambery‘s Travels in Central Asia

Abstract

Since the presented picture of the Orient in Vambery‘s Travels in Central Asia is neither authentic nor unprejudiced and the writer‘s progress in describing the facts is maneuvered by the highly biased and prejudiced mind of his ancestors, in an attempt to clarify the ambiguities and unveil the concealed truth wrapped by the monologue narration and description of Vambery the present study applied Edward Said‘s Orientalism as the theoretical framework to highlight those parts in the travel book in which the author betrays his reader by providing anti-orient views the same as a rabble rouser. Being unable to appreciate the differences between the East and the West Vambery openly looks down on the orient from several vantage points. To this end Vamberly assigns a Hungarien anti-orient to prioritize the occident against the orient and employs what Edward Said introduces as distorted knowledge, reductive images and disputatious polemics to accomplish his goal. Hopefully this study shed light on the subject and provides an unbiased reading where both the orient and occident are equally revered.