Re-Orienting the Renaissance Cultural Exchanges with the East [Paperback]

This book explores how the Renaissance entailed a global exchange of goods, skills and ideas between East and West. In chapters ranging from Ottoman history to Venetian publishing, from portraits of St George to Arab philosophy, from cannibalism to diplomacy, the authors interrogate what all too often may seem to be settled certainties, such as the difference between East and West, the invariable conflict between Islam and Christianity, and the 'rebirth' of European civilization from roots in classical Greece and Imperial Rome.Foreword; W.Dalrymple Introduction: Re-Orienting the Renaissance; G.Maclean The Status of the Oriental Traveller in Renaissance Venice; D.Howard St George Between East and West; J.Brotton Mummy is Become Merchandise: Literature and the Anglo-Egyptian Mummy Trade in the Seventeenth-Century; P.Schwyzer A Double Perspective and a Lost Rivalry: Ogier de Busbeq and Melchior Lork in Instanbul; B.Rogerson The French Renaissance in Search of the Ottoman Empire; P.Mansel Petrarch and 'That Mad Dog Averroes'; R.Irwin Arabic Views of Europeans, 1578-1727: 'The Western Mediterranean'; N.Matar 'The Treacherous Cleverness of Hindsight': Myths of Ottoman Decay; C.Finkel

'9/11 has made it a matter of urgency for scholars to rethink the history of the interactions between Christianity and Islam. The essays in this volume demonstrate that, in addition to the rediscovery of Antiquity, cultural and commercial exchanges between Islam and western Europe played a decisive role in the making of the Renaissance. In a series of carefully-researched and well-crafted chapters, the authors reveal an intricate world of artistic, economic, and intellectual exchange. In sum, Re-Orienting the Renaissance does just that: it gets the reader thinking in new ways about an ostensibly familiar subject, with particular attention to the history of the relationship of the Renaissance to the Islamic cultures of the period.' - John Jeffries Martin, Professor and Chair, Departmenlc,