Medieval Orientalism and the Modern Imagination: The Case of the Two Rushdies

Shazia Jagot will be discussing the different ways of considering Orientalism for the Middle Ages, and also how modern literary writers use the medieval 'Oriental' past in their fiction, focusing on Salman Rushdie's new novel Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, where he pits faith against reason through Averroes and al-Ghazali.