“History written by the enemy”: Eastern Sources about the Ottomans on the Continent and in England

McJannet, Linda

doi:10.1111/j.1475-6757.2006.00088.x

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Her emphasis on cultural circulation is also affirming, since it extends to a larger canvas the kinds of cross-cultural influences that have interested me, such as the influence of Latin and vernacular translations of Arabic, Ottoman, and Byzantine histories on Richard Knolles's Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603). 3 Similarly the European fascination with Tamburlaine and other Muslim imperial figures in histories and in dramatic works (such as Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great) provides ample evidence of ''imperial jockeying'' both among the Muslim empires depicted (Persian, Egyptian, Ottoman, and Scythian), and between them and the nascent imperial ambitions of Britain and other European states. Further, throughout the late 16th and 17th centuries, playwrights used episodes from Ottoman history to explore positive and negative models of kingship, the high price of factional infighting, and other political themes with domestic relevance.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dialogue and Dialectic: A Response by Linda McJannet to Laura Doyle’s “Notes towards a Dialectical Method: Modernities, Modernisms, and the Crossings of Empire”

McJannet

2012

Literature Compass

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dialogue and Dialectic: A Response by Linda McJannet to Laura Doyle’s “Notes towards a Dialectical Method: Modernities, Modernisms, and the Crossings of Empire”

McJannet

2012

Literature Compass

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…See Denton 1998: 70–71. On early modern European translators glossing Ottoman texts, see McJannet 2006.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting Dragomans: Boundaries and Crossings in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Rothman

2009

Comp Stud Soc Hist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Early modern observers rarely failed to comment on the perceived diversity of peoples, customs, and languages of Mediterranean societies. This diversity they sought to capture in travel narratives, costume albums, missionary and diplomatic reports, bilingual dictionaries, and a range of other genres of the “contact zone.” Modern scholars, too, have celebrated the early modern Mediterranean's ostensibly multiple, diverse, and even “pluralist,” “cosmopolitan,” or “multicultural” nature. At the same time, in part thanks to the reawakened interest in Braudel's seminal work and in part as a much-needed corrective to the politically current but analytically bankrupt paradigm of “clash of civilizations,” recent studies have also emphasized the region's “shared,” “connected,” “mixed,” “fluid,” “syncretic,” or “hybrid” sociocultural practices. Of course, these two analytical emphases are far from mutually exclusive, as recently underscored by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell's comprehensive, longue durée model of diversity-in-connectivity. Yet, neither Horden and Purcell's structuralist “new thalassology,” nor other studies of the early modern Mediterranean have offered a systematic account of how “diversity” and “connectivity” as both the flow of social practices and the categories for speaking about them have been articulated through specific institutions and genres.

show abstract

“…36 Matar's translation of the accounts of Arabic travelers in Europe had made an important contribution in this regard, 37 and my own study of Latin translations of Byzantine, Arabic, and Turkish histories traced their influence on the versions of the Tamburlaine story available to English readers and writers. 38 In a recent article, Gerald MacLean points out the problematic and contested nature of the most basic terms in the field -'Europe', 'Christendom', 'Empire', 'East', and 'West' -and asserts the need to dismantle what he views as the too-long perpetuated myth of the 'clash of civilizations'. 39 Like Burton, MacLean challenges scholars to move beyond 'one-way' analysis.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Islam and English Drama: A Critical History

McJannet

2009

Early Theatre

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Early Modern English Drama and the Islamic World Islam and English Drama: A Critical History Though it may seem to be a recent phenomenon, scholarly interest in Islam and early modern English drama goes back almost a hundred years to Louis Wann's 'The Oriental in Elizabethan Drama' (1915) and Warner Grenelle Rice's 'Turk, Moor, and Persian in English Literature' (1927). 1 In its exhaustive scope, Rice's unpublished dissertation anticipates Samuel C. Chew's The Crescent and the Rose (1937), which is usually seen as the pioneering discussion of the topic in modern times. 2 The dominant concerns of these early critics were the historical accuracy (variously defined) and aesthetic merits of the plays in hand. Wann identified the historical sources used by the playwrights and judged that, while the sources themselves were often inaccurate, the dramatists achieved 'a much more accurate and dispassionate portrayal of oriental character than we are wont to [assume]'. 3 By contrast, both Rice and Chew were more likely to see the representations of Islamic characters (especially Moors) as examples of monstrous cultural stereotypes. In their view, the playwrights' adherence to their sources doomed rather than redeemed them, and their interventions were seen as usually making matters worse. 4 Rice argued that as a result Muslim characters are 'dreadful beyond belief ' and are therefore 'failures'-artistically and perhaps ideologically, though this category was not explicit in his analysis. 5 Chew likewise comments with mordant irony on the plays' excess of prejudice and lack of artistic merit. After summarizing the denouement of The Courageous Turk, he concludes: 'and the tragedy comes to an end-much to the reader's relief '. 6 Similarly, having noted that prefatory verses to Osmond the Great Turk stress the author's youth, Chew observes that the author 'needed whatever excuse could be offered for him'. 7

show abstract

“History written by the enemy”: Eastern Sources about the Ottomans on the Continent and in England

Cited by 7 publications

References 1 publication

Dialogue and Dialectic: A Response by Linda McJannet to Laura Doyle’s “Notes towards a Dialectical Method: Modernities, Modernisms, and the Crossings of Empire”

Dialogue and Dialectic: A Response by Linda McJannet to Laura Doyle’s “Notes towards a Dialectical Method: Modernities, Modernisms, and the Crossings of Empire”

Interpreting Dragomans: Boundaries and Crossings in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Islam and English Drama: A Critical History

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About