Describing The Bride of Abydos, Byron says he wrote with "my head full of orientahi/es (I can't call them isms), and wrote on rapidly." (53) On the one hand, there seems to be an emphasis on style ("
orientality" as a kind of decor), but there is also a suggestion of
orientality as an orientation.
Lancefield (2004), in his examination of early 20th century US representations of the Orient in musical performances, uses the term "
orientality" to refer to "'what it was' that many people felt they heard or saw or embodied in moments of orientalist performance" (2004:41, italics added).