-

The word ‘travel’ in literature goes along with the word ‘exotism’ meaning non-native. This word became prevalent in French literature after the nineteenth century as a result of numerous travels of writers to diverse spots including the East. The souvenir of these travels was a series of stereotypes and set thoughts entered literature so that some of them still remain in French literature. Sometimes contemporary writers resorted to these ct thoughts to discribe the customs or habits of the East that on the one hand, stem from westernisation of the East among the Europeans and on the other hand, it is the explanation of a sort of intertexture.
The Eastern thought is totally based on beliefs and recognitions of the culture and civilisation of the East and its comparison with Western customs. With confrontation of the two cultures, in case the writer does not accept the change easily, the stereotypes will create a negative impact. In the twentieth century, because the number of the writers who have talked about the East in their works are far more than those in the nineteenth century and because many of them are eastern Francophone writers, who have admired the values of philosophy and thought of the East, their image of the East in French literature is different from that of the literature of the nineteenth century.