Sax Romer's Use of Oriental Words in His Fiction
Abstract
Sax Rohmer (the pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward, 1883-1959) was one of the most widely read pop authors in the English-speaking world in the 20th century. His Fu Manchu first appeared in "The Zayat Kiss," in the British magazine Story-Teller (October 1912), followed by the novel The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu in 1913. After World War II Rohmer changed this sinister Chinese arch-criminal into a heroic anti-Communist. Further thrilled by radio versions, feature films, stage plays, television series, and even a Marvel comic book, millions of readers have shuddered in Rohmer's auras of tomb robbers, ancient Egyptian demons haunting asp-infested tunnels beneath the pyramids, voodoo rites and zombies, and vampires, communicated by carefully selected eastern lexical borrowings. In 1951 he introduced the glamorous witch Sumuru as a female Fu Manchu in five well-received novels.
Subject
AlchemyAncient Egypt
Anthropology
Arabic language and culture
Chinese culture and people
Agatha Christie
Comparative Studies
Drugs
Egypt
Fu Manchu
Islam
Sir William Jones
Edward W Lane
Lexicography
Linguistics
Literature
Mahound (=Mahummad)
Oxford English Dictionary
Persian language and culture
Edgar Allen Poe
Pyramids
Sax Rohmer
Semantics
Sociology
Sorcery
Tarzan
Word borrowings
Yello Peril
H. G. Wells
Department
EnglishCollections
Citation
Cannon, Garland (2005). Sax Romer's Use of Oriental Words in His Fiction. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /2820.