Images of the Muslim Woman in Early Modern English Drama: Queens, Eves, and Furies

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Early modern scholarship often reads the dramatic representations of the Muslim woman in the light of postcolonial identity politics, which sees an organic relationship between the Wests historical domination of the East and the Western discourse on the East. This book problematizes the above trajectory by arguing that the assumption of a power relation between a dominating West and a subordinate East cannot be sustained within the context of the political and historical realities of early modern Europe. The Ottoman Empire remained as a dominant superpower throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was perceived by Protestant England both as a military and religious threat and as a possible ally against Catholic Spain. Reading a series of early modern plays from Marlowe to Beaumont and Fletcher alongside a number of historical sources and documents, this book re-interprets the image of Islamic femininity in the periods drama to reflect this overturn in the worlds power balances, as well as the intricate dynamics of Englands intensified contact with Islam in the Mediterranean.

Reviews

This well-historicized literary analysis makes an outstanding pinpointed intervention in the surging scholarly conversation about the workings of racism, coloniality, and gender in early modern English drama's representations of Muslim Others.

Author Bio

z ktem is assistant professor in the English Language and Literature Department of Istanbul Aydn University.