Approach to Study

One of the most important themes of this book has to do with how to approach an area chosen for study. There are different ways to study different things and this book looks at the approaches that have been taken to the study of Orientalism. Orientalism is the name given to the study of the area that is deemed inhabited by Orientals, which includes the Middle East, the Near East, and the Far East with this whole area of the world lumped into one category called Oriental, or East.

Most of the approach to the study of Orientalism focused on language. In the early days of the eighteenth century, no other approach was known but for scholars to learn the different languages and to translate the native works into Western languages. They thought that this was the way to study the culture. The use of philology...