Turning Turk English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean [Paperback]

Turning Turk looks at contact between the English and other cultures in the early modern Mediterranean, and analyzes the representation of that experience on the London stage. Vitkus's book demonstrates that the English encounter with exotic alterity, and the theatrical representations inspired by that encounter, helped to form the emergent identity of an English nation that was eagerly fantasizing about having an empire, but was still in the preliminary phase of its colonizing drive. Vitkus' research shows how plays about the multi-cultural Mediterranean participated in this process of identity formation, and how anxieties about religious conversion, foreign trade and miscegenation were crucial factors in the formation of that identity.Theorizing the Exotic Other The English and the Mediterranean Encountering Islam Machiavellian Merchants Engendering Exchange The Mediterranean and the New World

'[A] revealing exploration of England's early modern relationship with the Ottoman Empire and with Islam as a whole...Vitkus provides essential reading to those with an interest in the meeting of early modern cultures.' - Early Modern Literary Studies

DANIEL VITKUS is Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University. He has published articles on English Renaissance drama and culture, on European representations of Islam, and on cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period. He is also the editor of Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England and Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England.