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Entrapment

18
Another common portrayal of Muslim figures in works of art was executed through depictions of them being physically trapped, and therefore unable to escape the restraints of Christianity, whether tangible or not. In many cases, the evidently non-Christians were contained within the image frames, and consequently found it difficult to resist the control that Christianity held throughout the medieval world. Even if Islamdom was capable of holding a viable threat under Christian rule, the Latin Church made sure that it remained feasibly defeated. A visual hierarchy is very clearly present, demonstrating the superiority that Christianity felt over those who did not follow their ideologies.
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"Altogether an internally structured archive is built up from the literature that belongs to these experiences. Out of this comes a restricted number of typical encapsulations: the journey, the history, the fable, the stereotype, the polemical confrontation. These are the lenses through which the Orient is experienced, and they shape the language, perception, and form of the encounter between East and West" (Said 58).

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