The Image of "Turkishness" on the Jacobean Stage
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Hradec Králové Journal of Anglophone Studies |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | English drama; Turkishness; Renaissance; Ottoman Empire; Turkish; Muslim; Christian; stereotype |
| Description | One of the reasons why English Renaissance drama has always enjoyed great popularity among both general theatre-going audiences and literary critics is its intrinsic quality of reflecting the current issues of the early modern period. One such example was the encounter of Englishmen with Turks. Since medieval crusades, Europeans had perceived Turks as the arch enemy of the whole Christendom and the territorial expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries even intensified the conflict between the West and the East. This article focuses on the ideological campaign launched by English Renaissance playwrights against the imminent Turkish threat and explores the image of “Turkishness” which they drew – that is, the stereotypical portrayal of Turks and their culture that moulded the then anti-Muslim sentiment. The image of “Turkishness” is traceable in many Renaissance plays. Even authors such as Shakespeare, who did not devote any of their plays to the Turkish issue, participated in the anti-Muslim rhetoric of the time. Although scholars such as Nabil Matar agree that Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism (the recurrent misconception of the Orient in the Western literary tradition) is applicable to the texts written from the 18th century onwards, this paper tries to demonstrate that the mechanisms which later shaped the Anglocentric perspective of the Muslim “Other” and contributed to the underlying principle of Said’s theory, had been under way even before the English imperial drive began taking place. |
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