Leading History by the Nose: The Turn to the Eighteenth Century in Midnight's Children

A huge volume of literature has been written about Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses and the fatwa issued in response to it by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Whilst much literary criticism has recommended that we should avoid reading the text and the furore of “the Rushdie affair” along the harmful binary lines of Eastern tyranny and Western freedom, this article addresses this rhetoric of cultural difference directly. Arguing that an unhistorical idea of the Enlightenment is becoming increasingly central to the way that Rushdie and others explain what they perceive as the gulf between “Islam” and “the West”, and analysing Rushdie’s recent tendency to construct himself as “the new Voltaire”, this study crosses centuries and disciplines to shed new light on the ways in which the discursive figure of the Islamic despot is central to the cultural critiques of both authors.

show abstract

Parallel Forces: Identity and Authority in Roland Barthes and Tristram Shandy

Morsberger¹

2001

sec

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Leading History by the Nose: The Turn to the Eighteenth Century in Midnight's Children

Cited by 7 publications

References 23 publications

The passionate cosmopolitan in Salman Rushdie'sFury

The passionate cosmopolitan in Salman Rushdie'sFury

The fatwa and the philosophe: Rushdie, Voltaire, and Islam

Parallel Forces: Identity and Authority in Roland Barthes and Tristram Shandy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About