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Multiple Wives, Multiple Pleasures: Representing the Harem, 1800-1875, by Joan DelPlato; pp. ix + 259. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2002, $85.00, £68.00.
Given the flood of publications that succeeded Edward Said's incendiary Orientalism of 1978, it is hard to find a text that breaks new ground in the field of imperial studies. )oan DclPlato's Multiple Wives, Multiple Pleasures, however, is a noteworthy exception. In this work, DelPlato provides both an overview and an iconographical analysis of a rich visual tradition that flourished in France and Britain between the years 1800 and 1875: the representation of the harem.
Her subject, of course, is not a new one. Malek Alloula, Alev Lytle Croutier, Fatima Mernissi, and Ruth Bernard Yea/.ell are just some of the many authors who have published on the institution of the harem as it pertains to the arts, and countless others have written more briefly on the wide range of multidisciplinary issues that it inspires. But DelPlato's work distinguishes itself from its predecessors in several ways, including its democratic approach to images. Though photography is regrettably absent, more than 170 fine art and popular images are illustrated in the text. These range from the most canonical of harem pictures, by such renowned artists as Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, and John Frederick Lewis, to scores of mass-produced prints and little-known paintings whose popularity has suffered with the passing of years. The wealth of visual material that DelPlato examines allows her to...