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Representation of Muslims in Early Modern English Literature Dawlat Yassin

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Representation of Muslims in Early Modern English Literature Dawlat Yassin Representation of Muslims in Early Modern English Literature Dawlat Yassin Early modern England underwent an confronted English people directly with the economic change towards capitalism when trade question of their own identity. The need to define brought English merchants to the Middle East, the self and the other becomes vital in an era North Africa and other parts of the Ottoman where contact with different people is inevitable. dominions. Motivated by good prospects of trade According to Jean E. Howard, in this “Age of and profit, or merely the love of adventure and Discovery, a sense of English national identity exploring new countries and new cultures, took shape in relation to an emerging language of traders as well as adventurers came in contact racial difference in which skin color and with peoples of different religions, customs, and physiognomy became over determined markers skin colors. In this transitional age, of a whole range of religious and sexual and cultural difference by which the English were English identities were conflictively altered distinguished from various non-European by means of two elements: the economic 'others'” (102). The wealthy, militant Ottoman and epistemological transition to a new Empire was threatening to influence all cultural kind of society, first, and also the relations aspects of England and Europe. Chews recently established with a new and until then described the Ottoman threat that started in the unknown culture, which was threateningly fourteenth century as “a cloud [that] arose in the and radically Other especially because it east and from the fifteenth till far into the was dangerously powerful, a culture that seventeenth the Ottoman peril hung over significantly played a role in the new Europe” (qtd. in Lezra 163). economic and social scenario. (Casellas 125) English theater reacted with a new kind of play that came to be known later as the “Turk This contact resulted in a need for a set of play” or “Turkish play.” Plays of this type definitions of the Self, and a drive to discover a express a desire to trade with the Muslim Other way to conduct a communication with the Other and to win “him” as a political ally, but at the while keeping one’s own identity safe and same time, they forcefully emphasize the dangers unaffected. of such communication. Turkish plays are The acquaintance with Muslims, their haunted with anxiety at the inevitable, though different religion, and different skin color desirable, contact with Muslims and are meant to Representation of Muslims in Early Modern English Literature 11 warn Christians of the physical and spiritual Muslims' lechery and barbarism. Skin color is hazards of associating with Muslims. English another form of constructing Muslims’ otherness; theater presents Muslims as a threat to Christian “Muslim” becomes the synonym of black, Moor, monotheism and morality, as well as to the Blackmore, and Saracen (Casellas 63). The masculinity and manhood of Christian difference in religion is connected to blackness Englishmen and Europeans in general. The only due to the inherent connotation of the evil and form of contact with Muslims that the English sinister nature of what is dark or black in western theater approved was trade and materialistic culture. Skin color becomes important when the exchange. A good example from Phillip words “Muslim”, “Moor” and “Turk” become Massinger’s The Renegado is Vitelli’s instruction color-implicating vocabulary, and Muslims to his servant: “We are allowed free trading, and become connected to the descendants of Ham, with safety, / temper your tongue and meddle not who are doomed by the authority of Biblical with the Turks, / their manner, nor their religion narrative (Casellas 64). This connection supports (1. 1. 46-48). all imagined ideas about the corruption of Muslims. The extremity of the Ottomans’ wealth and power stunned the English, for they could not see Both Heywood’s and Massinger’s plays these things as rewards to Muslims from God. present Muslimness as the identity of the morally They wanted an explanation of the Ottomans’ deprived pagan: the black, evil human being. wealth and military prowess that would refute Muslims are portrayed as bloody, licentious any possibility that God was taking the heathens, and their religion is doomed as mere Ottomans’ side, rather than one which did not paganism and idolatry. The Renegado and The position God as condemning Muslims and their Fair Maid of the West warn the English audience so-called “pagan” faith. The English wanted to against any human or cultural communication see and believe that Muslims’ power and wealth with Muslims. In these plays, Islamic culture were not a reward, but rather a scourge to punish represents a threat to English and European deviant, sinful Christians, mainly the Pope and manhood, primarily through circumcision, which the Catholics. Whereas the Protestant English is often confused with castration. The other defined themselves as the people of the only true anxiety that these two plays reflect is the fear of religion on earth, they identified the Others as miscegenation with the black heathen and the Satanic and devilish. Dark skin color helped contamination of the purity of the white race. In associate Muslims with evil, for the English saw short, association with Muslims is deemed as a the dark skin as a reflection of dark heart and threat of eternal damnation. spirit. In The Fair Maid of the West, the English are In Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of presented as morally superior and more civilized the West and Philip Massinger’s The Renegado, than Muslims. Mullisheg is barbarous in the way Muslims are accepted by the English as trade he seeks power and sexual pleasure. He raises his partners and may be politically and economically throne “Upon the slaughtered bodies of [his] equals, but their religion is identified as an foes” (Heywood 4.3.10), gives orders to seize unacceptable paganism. This racialized view of Christian merchants’ ships and goods to enrich religion positions the “Turk” as morally inferior his state treasury, and plans to buy sexual to the idealized virtuous Christian. In these plays, pleasure with his money by purchasing Islam forms the main constituent of Muslims’ concubines: “Find us concubines, / the fairest otherness and is represented as a source of Christian damsels you can hire / Or buy for Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.2 (Spring 2012) Representation of Muslims in Early Modern English Literature 12 gold,” (Heywood 4. 3. 28-30). He has no barbarous, bloody, and pagan king is fascinated scruples about using his power to attain his by the beauty of the fair, Christian, virtuous sexual objects, either: “the loveliest of the Moors maiden who robs him of his manly courage and / we can command, and Negroes everywhere” turns him effeminate. In front of this beautiful (Heywood 4. 3. 30-1). On the other hand, English girl, Mullisheg is led by his passion. He English superiority in the play is based on their is ready to give up half his kingdom for her, and civility and moral discipline without openly yet she still resists. He is unable to have her associating that superiority with other categories either by temptation, or by force. Bess also like religion or skin color. Reading between the interferes with Mullisheg and prevents Spencer’s lines can reveal religion as the main factor that castration. At the end of the play, she is makes the English superior to Muslims. Muslims domesticated by marrying Spencer, the English are openly presented as pagans who make gentleman with whom she is in love. This sensual pleasure their main interest in life. marriage represents the victory of the English Whereas Muslim identity is presented in the most patriarchy and the imperviousness of English negative ways, Englishness becomes the manhood in relation with another powerful synonym of virtue, modesty and beauty. Muslims empire. are viewed as both bloody and lascivious. Furthermore, in her virtuousness and The Fair Maid of the West’s chastity is virginity, Bess can be understood as standing for contrasted to Mullisheg’s sensuality. Bess is the Virgin Queen, Queen Elizabeth I. The virtuous even though she lives in a very tempting relationship that feminizes and emasculates situation: she is a poor bar attendant serving wine Mullisheg can also be interpreted as England and to men who are fascinated by her beauty and its queen emasculating the Ottoman empire as want to prey upon her chastity. She also remains represented by an Ottoman king: “Elizabeth I chaste while confronted with excessive wealth unmans the pagan king with her charms and and power at Mullisheg’s court. Bess resists the retrieves all the English merchants’ confiscated temptations of love, wealth, and power and holds goods as well as the life of her captive lover” on to her Christian virtue. In contrast to this (Slights & Woloshyn 254). This supports the idealized Christian maiden, Mullisheg stands as theory advanced by many critics of early modern an emblem of sensuality. He plans to include in English drama that England’s relationship with his harem women of different races, colors, and other empires is characterized by emasculation even religions. His insatiable appetite for sexual and feminization of the Other. pleasure is presented in an utter contrast to Skin color also appears in its traditional Bess’s faithfulness to both her Christian lover western connotation in Bess’s dealing with and her Christian virtue. Mullisheg. The threat of miscegenation hovers By being impervious to the Muslim king’s over their meeting. Whereas Mullisheg desires to temptations, Bess plays the role of emasculating have wives and concubines of different races and him. English relations with other empires were colors, he has gotten nothing from Bess more characterized by emasculation (Fuchs 61).
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