Objects, Matter, and Assemblage: Orientalism and Awe in Robert de Clari's Constantinople.

This article proposes to read Robert de Clari's account of Constantinople through the lenses of vibrant materiality, orientalism and the ethics and affects of colonial pursuit. Why was his account so different from Geoffroy de Villehardouin's? Why was he so focused on objects, on materials, and marvels? If we position his text, one of the first vernacular prose histories in French, in its relation to romance, to broader narratives of empire and the "Saracen" other, and in regard to the politics of colonial logic, we see that his version of events reflects broader logics and legacies of the Crusades and their attempts to colonize, rationalize, and interpret the "Other" through orientalist, racist, and marvelous lenses. Clari's account justifies the sacking of a sister empire—a Christian empire—due to the wealth of the relics conquered and the affective power therein, thus rationalizing the imagined end of Christendom at the borders of Byzantium. Clari thus uses the affective power of relics to imagine a united Christendom, united against a foreign, pagan/"Saracen" other, and to participate in the prophesy that, vaticinium ex eventu, Constantinople was always marked for conquest by the "French" and never for truce with the "Saracens." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]