An Act Of Approaching The Other-plurality And Multiperspective In The Novel The Collector Of The World

This thesis deals with the novel The collector of the world whose author is Ilija Trojanow, a bulgaria-german with immigrant background and wants to primarily analyse the representation of the oriental culture in this novel. During his writing of this book the writer has revealed his intention to present a story from the different oriental perspective rather than a narration dominated by the west. So from different perspectives different stories and mentalities will be manifested. Based on the above-named proposition, this thesis shows an interest on the content-related alignment at first, and wants to explore how the writer stages the images of the oriental world and people, which are defined as "the other" for a long time, and how he constructs the power structures between the colonized and colonizer. Moreover, this work also studies whether the writer has enabled a multi-perspective narrative in his novel and how he does it, with the intention of deconstructing the grand narrative style dominating in the west and therefore debilitating its authority.As the theoretical backup, the discussions about the concept "otherness" (in German: Fremdheit) in the intercultural studies are to be introduced. Thereby the question is concerned, namely how Trojanow inserts in the process of figure and power constellation the important characteristics of this concept, such as the different forms, its relative qualities and the different cognitive modes of "otherness". Additionally, the discourse of orientalism by Edward Said should also to be mentioned. Based on the comparison between images of orients formed in the contexts of colonial ideology and hegemonism in Saids criticism and those studied in this thesis, discusses about what is renewed in terms of presenting the orients in Trojanows novel are presented.The text analysis starts with the several categories of the item "otherness" in the novel, their same characters can be summarized in the term of plurality, such as "the geographic ’other’", which refers to the uncertain and varied natural and social environment. The category of "the cultural ’other’" refers then to the colonized in the multiple relationships between the colonized and colonizers, including relationship between masters and servants, between tutors and students, between men and mistresses, between explorers and guides. By means of these different relationships different perspectives for knowing the oriental society are also provided. What’s more, in these relationships these indigenous people have shown their varied characters and feelings and can’t be generalized with just one or two single words. In addition, the colonizer in these relationships is no longer the absolute ruler, but is often challenged by the local people.Seen from the perspective of genre, The collector of the world is a historic novel; Apart from the different text forms and the use of many oriental words and other elements, the most successful trick in the text structure is that there are mainly two parallel anchored narrative strings with different time and space dimension. One relates from the oriental multi-perspective narrating the story from the present time, while the other derives from the western hero, describing the story from the past time. In this way, the oriental people can have their own voices and this is a typical writing strategy that decentralizes and invalidates the traditional western colonial discourse authority.In the flow of globalization all cultures are facing the challenges and opportunities in the multicultural coexistence, and all of us have to reflect ourselves and adjust the relationship with other cultures. Trojanow’s focus on other different cultures in his literary works is exactly a response to this requirement of the reality.