University of Kurdistan Critical Literary Studies 2676-699X 4 2 2022 05 01 A Study of Antinarrative Elements in Alexander Burnes’ Travels into Bokhara 1 19 62211 10.34785/J014.2022.621 EN Ahmad Gholi Ph.D. Candidate of English Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Mohammad Marandi Professor of English Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Zeinab Ghasemitari Assistant Professor of American Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Journal Article 2021 02 15 Once treated like a pariah in the realm of literary criticism, the genre of travel writing becomes a legitimate object of critical inquiry after Said’s Orientalism in which he critically examines French and English travel books written in the context of colonialism. Similarly, this article embarks on reading Alexander Burnes’ Travels into Bokhara in the light of Orientalism. The travelogue recounts Burnes’ journey to Afghanistan and Turkistan during the Great Game. Instead of extracting and interpreting orientalist tropes in Burnes’ travel book, the present article seeks to study its antinarrative components: those statements and praxis which are inconsistent with Orientalism’s policing and regulatory norms. It contends that the travel writer exhibits his disenchantment with orientalist vision in three ways. Firstly, through recoiling from reiterating the trope of the alleged ‘Oriental’ despotism. Secondly, via unsettling the trope of the ‘monarch of all I survey’, and finally, by demonstrating cultural receptivity towards indigenous people and their Islamic culture. https://cls.uok.ac.ir/article_62211_7d12066cf205dcab9d6763887a260f8a.pdf