The Opposition of The Ancient East and The Modern West in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

Abstract

The article examines the opposition between the Ancient East and the Modern West in nineteenth-century French literature. It analyzes how French Romantic and post-Romantic writers represented the Orient as a space of antiquity, spirituality, and historical continuity, while portraying the West as a symbol of modernity and progress. The study focuses on the works of François-René de Chateaubriand, Alphonse de Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval, Victor Hugo, and Gustave Flaubert, whose writings contributed to the development of Orientalist discourse. Drawing on Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, the article shows that the East–West opposition functions not only as a literary motif but also as a broader cultural paradigm reflecting nineteenth-century European views of civilization and cultural identity.