Decamps, Orientalist Intertext, and Counter-Discourse in Gautier's Constantinople

Omnipresent allusions to European representations of the Middle East create an intertextual matrix that problematizes the narrator's relationship to his subject and contributes to a discourse which counters that of discovery and validation of Turkey. Especially significant are references to the canonical orientalist painting of Decamps. Displacing the subject into the field of the ideal, defining it as irremediably other, this intertext affirms Gautier's inability to penetrate Turkey's surface and reinstates the impossibility of bridging the gaps between a familiar Europe and an inscrutable Orient. Constantinople's narration undermines itself and brings the Occident face to face with problems of its own doxa, discourse, and ideology. (GC)