A Living Tableau of Queerness : a Postcolonial Study of Lady Sheil s Travel Account on Persia

The huge corpus of travel literature, penned by the British male and female writers on Persia during the high noon of imperialism, should not be taken simply as an innocent transcription of the other world; rather, it has been asserted by postcolonial critics that the mapping out of non-European nations through a matrix of textual production in stereotypical attributes plays a crucial role in perpetuating and legitimizing the imperial domination. Lady Sheil s portrayal proceeded with her husband s Notes, authored within the constraining frame of colonial discourse and backed up by the discursive authority, presents a living tableau ofqueerness of the Persians as the other inferior Orient in need of Messianic British mission. To set this study in context, it initially defines the key concepts of the field, and then it moves on to a postcolonial scrutiny, not only to probe into the stereotypical images, but also to unravel the exploitative side of the imperial project lurking in the narrative.