88 ŠTÚDIE / ARTICLES World Literature Studies 1  vol. 10  2017(88 – 99) Frontier Orientalism and the stereotype formation process in Georgian literature MZIA JAMAGIDZE INTRODUCTION Georgia, located in the Caucasus at the crossroads of Western and Eastern civi- lizations, has historically been a multicultural country, where the traces of contacts among diferent cultures coexist with indigenous cultural features. Historically, the country passed through the dominance of various neighboring super-states, includ- ing the Muslim Persian and Ottoman Empires. But in the early 19th century, afer appealing to Orthodox Christian Russia for military partnership against its Muslim neighbors, the Georgian nation was eventually colonized by the Russian Empire. While dominant political powers constantly tried to spread their cultural infuences, Georgian identity and social consciousness has historically been formed in the con- text of political and cultural resistance against colonizing forces. At each stage of these historical transformations, Georgian society faced issues related to its cultural identity issues and to the country’s position between Orient and Occident. Both these historical processes and the unambiguous choice made by the modern Georgian state to claim a part of the European political and cultural heritage make it evident that Georgia belongs to a Western type of cultural identity and sees itself as belonging to the European space. Georgian representations of the nation’s historical relations with the Islamic space largely mirror the corresponding Western narratives analyzed by Edward Said in Ori- entalism (2003, 60–61): Yet where Islam was concerned, European fear, if not always respect, was in order. Afer Mohammed’s death in 632, the military and later the cultural and religious hegemony of Islam grew enormously. […] And to this extraordinary assault Europe could respond with very little except fear and a kind of awe not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize ter- ror, devastation, the demonic, hordes of hated barbarians. For Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma. Until the end of the 17th century the “Ottoman peril” lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, fgures, virtues, and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life. In defning his concept of “frontier Orientalism”, Andre Gingrich places the Cau- casus region in the same category as other countries outside of Northwestern Europe which had signifcant interactions with the Islamic world: