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Article: Between Orientalism and Philhellenism: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's "Real" Greeks
- Article from:
- The Eighteenth Century
- Article date:
- October 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Texas Tech University Press Fall 2004. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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On April Fool's Day 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, one of the early English travelers to Greece, wrote the following letter to Alexander Pope from Adrianopole commenting on his newly published translation of Homer:1
I read over your Homer here with an infinite Pleasure, and find several little passages explain'd that I did not before entirely comprehend the Beauty of, many of the customs and much of the dress then in fashion being yet retain'd; and I don't wonder to find more remains here of an Age so distant.2
Her solely literary knowledge of Greece buoyed by these living "archaeological" discoveries, she conflates fact and fiction and, moved not by the local peasants' reality but by the ...