Tracing Huxley’s orientalism: the European ‘Oriental’ background and Jesting Pilate as intellectual travelogue

Abstract

Aldous Huxley was deeply influenced in his formative years by the East, and this is key to understanding his later evolution as a writer. Towards an exploration of this, the current study analyses the intellectual and cultural context of Europe at the time, with special attention to European writers and intellectuals who had an influence on Huxley and who thus helped to pave the way for his interest in the East and oriental matters early in his life, without ignoring the influence that they would also have on him in later years. Secondly, Orientalism is addressed both as an influence on Huxley and as a modern critical theory, with the aim of demonstrating the author’s modernity in light of this. Finally, the study analyses the work Jesting Pilate, not only in terms of its oriental prospects and proclivity as an intellectual travel book, but also as a means of tracing the oriental elements therein as determining factors in Huxley’s seminal stage during his European years. This is seen as a necessary amalgam, and one that would be further developed in his later output, during the so-called American years.