AWEJ. Special Issue on Literature No.2 October, 2014 Pp.182- 200
The Exotic as Repulsive: Edith Wharton in Morocco
Rachid Agliz
Faculty of Letters, University Ibnou Zohr,
Agadir, Morocco.
Abstract:
The engagement of western writers with Morocco is part and parcel of a wider long running encounter with exotic cultures. The exotic world and its chanting appeals have, in fact, stimulated the interest of a host of travel writers and anthropologists around the globe. The exoticist and orientalist appeals associated with North Africa prompted many American and European travel writers to venture to Morocco in an attempt to embrace a new cultural otherness. Edith Wharton represents the vogue of American travel writers whose main goals and interests are both to accommodate the exotic and to represent it as a commodity to be consumed worldwide. This paper aims at presenting both Wharton’s assessment of the Moroccan cultural otherness as well as her orientalist and exoticist approaches toward the Moroccan landscape and its people.
Keywords: The Exotic, Orientalism, Exoticism, Ethnography, Anthropolgy and Cultural Otherness.