The Novel of His Heart: Disraeli’s Tancred and Orientalism

Although Tancred: Or The New Crusade (1847) was Disraeli’s favourite among his novels, critics continue to underestimate its value – it is the only book of the Young England trilogy to be considered unworthy of a modern critical edition. Commonly seen as an Orientalist exercise revealing Disraeli’s imperial myth, Tancred in fact contravenes any British dream of dominion over the East and contains a revolutionary idea which is entrusted to the Angel of Arabia. The “sublime and solacing doctrine of theocratic equality” is contrary to Sidonia’s sychophantic dictum that “All is race” and challenges the principle of the chosen people, thus inviting a reading of Disraeli’s novel which relies on Edward Said’s essay Freud and the Non-European rather than his own standard Orientalist view.