“... art, hybrid, impure, heterogeneous, visionary, obscene, dangerous, self-contradictory, chaotic? Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism cites Blake’s remark in its early pages in order to mediate an assertion and a denial. The assertion is that culture is a crucial factor in the desire to found and maintain imperial regimes; the denial is that this ...”

“... Christianity. If Islam was a tool cleverly manipulated by temporal powers, could the same not be said of Christianity? In many ways, Malcolm’s book is a testament to the destabilising power of ideas. Seeking to understand others came at the risk of undermining accepted understandings of one’s own society and religion.Anyone​ who has studied the history ...”

“... was at this inn, on the evening of 3 May 1591, that the English alchemist, clairvoyant and con-man Edward Kelley was arrested by officers of Emperor Rudolf II. At the time of his arrest Kelley was an internationally famous figure, but thereafter the story grows confused: he disappears from view into the dungeons of 16th-century Bohemia. News of his death ...”

“... Crusaders and Muslims were neighbours in Syria, yet this did not promote mutual understanding. As Edward Said has observed, ‘there were the redoubtable conquering Eastern movements, principally Islam, of course; there were the militant pilgrims, chiefly the Crusaders. Altogether an internally structured archive is built up from the literature that ...”

“... always been the case that Arabs were seen in France as bearers of ‘manliness’. In Orientalism, Edward Said identified an earlier stereotype – the effeminate, youthful, available Arab – by reading across a wide range of scholarship, fiction, poetry and art, mostly English and French, all of it produced in the imperial era. The threat – and the ...”

“... than academics who make a preening performance of not really being academics, like John Fraser and Edward Said. Fraser on this author cannot match Said’s remarkable amalgam of souped-up abstractionism and overpowering factual ignorance, though his own species of banality will be felt by some to arrive at a similar ...”

“... the indolent Oriental languishing in slavishness, a construction put in its place some time ago by Edward Said. Knox is on much stronger ground in dealing with the intellectual reappraisal of the ancient world which goes hand in hand with the multicultural perspective. He is generous in his praise of the Paris School, but warns against taking the ...”

“... Part I: ‘Was Mahomet inspired with a dove?/Thou with an eagle art inspired then.’ Muhammad was said on one occasion to have put corn into his ear to attract a dove, which he then claimed was the Holy Spirit delivering him prophecies. The scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries, writing in Latin and sometimes in the vernacular, were in a position to reject ...”

“... Not that Declan Kiberd, director of the Yeats Summer School, would admit them. Citing the ideas of Edward Said, he recently argued that ‘ “Irishness” is simply the experience of being endlessly defined and described, derided and defended, by others.’ This is a bit odd coming from a man who annually invites the likes of ...”

“... striking back. The ‘Georgians’ buried their heads: between 1912 and 1922 Edward Marsh stubbornly published best-selling poetry collections, featuring Walter de la Mare, John Drinkwater, Harold Monro, Rupert Brooke, Wilfrid Blunt, nervously commemorating a threatened pastoral. Other writers, more diffident or isolated, threw in their ...”

“... as though by reaching Israel they were passing through the gates of heaven; in Hebrew they were said to be ‘making aliya’, ‘ascending’. Nor were they seen as mere ‘immigrants’: they were returning home after two thousand years of longing. A few months ago, the Israeli High Court rejected the appeal of 21 residents who wanted their nationality to ...”

“... paranoia about cancellable offences everyone might already be committing without realising it. Edward Said once wrote that Conrad was incapable of seeing beyond imperialism, since it monopolised the entire system of representation, but that he could express self-consciousness as an outsider. No degree of estrangement, however, was sufficient to save ...”

“... to an international monied class able to purchase property and education where it wants, while Edward Said (in an essay written in 1984) said that ‘anyone who is really homeless regards the habit of seeing estrangement in everything modern as an affectation, a display of modish attitudes.’ Exiles, as distinct ...”

“... to some degree. The Earth’s magnetic field isn’t the only aspect of cardinality that could be said to have natural origins. The notion of four principal directions is widespread (though not universal) and possibly originates in the egocentric co-ordinates of the human body: front, back, left and right. Brotton suggests that four, as the smallest composite ...”

“... set in the 16th century and mimics the style of contemporary Mamluke chronicles. But, as Edward Said noted, Ghitani’s novel was ‘in effect an allegory of Nasser’s rule with its combination of honest reformist zeal and political paranoia and repression’. The repression continued under Anwar al-Sadat, though the country was opened up to ...”