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©2010 Ameer Sohrawardy ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Trans-Imperial Mediations of the „Turk‟: Early Modern Depictions of Ottoman Encounter in English Drama and Non-Fiction Prose by Ameer Sohrawardy A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Literatures in English Written under the direction of Professor Ronald Levao And approved by __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey MAY, 2010 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Trans-Imperial Mediations of the „Turk‟: Early Modern Depictions of Ottoman Encounter in English Drama and Non-Fiction Prose by Ameer Sohrawardy Dissertation Director: Professor Ronald Levao My dissertation will examine the role of the trans-imperial mediator in facilitating literary and cultural interactions between England and the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. I define „trans-imperial mediator‟ to mean those travelers who shuttled between England and the Ottoman Empire, on behalf of their employers, for trade, intelligence-gathering, or diplomatic exchange. I argue that these mediators fashioned depictions of the Turk in response to their own trans-imperial anxieties. They imagined themselves to be aliens among the Ottoman subjects whom they encountered daily, despite sharing more in common with these Ottomans than the countrymen to whom they addressed their writing. At the same time, they felt equally uncertain about the prospects of returning home and being accepted as Englishmen, despite their assertions to the contrary. The identity that they created for themselves - Englishmen who were distinctly different from „the Turk‟ - must be understood as a response to their multiple identities ii and complex obligations. I argue that the „Turk‟ that these mediators introduced to English audiences must also be read as a composite creation – an imaginative response to the obligations of serving English interests while trying to live among the Ottomans. English playwrights recognized the creative opportunities allowed by dramatizing the polyvalent figure of the trans-imperial mediator to fashion their own types of Turks. Dramatists recognized the unique conjunctions between the vilified trans-imperial mediator and the Turk by using the play space to „recover‟ the imagined voice of the mediator and interrogate what anxieties occasioned the creation of particular types of Turk. English dramatists also introduced the figure of the trans-imperial mediator to a sympathetic audience – those discontented Englishmen who imagined escaping from the limiting social and economic conditions at home. Through lending the trans-imperial mediator a voice of his/her own, English „Turk‟ plays can be interpreted anew as interpretive paradigms for understanding how mediation functioned literarily in non- fiction accounts. Once we consider the shared investments that linked English trans- imperial mediators to their fictionalized counterparts, we may better understand why particular images of the „Turk‟ must be interpreted through a web of domestic anxieties. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is dedicated to my father. My deepest thanks to: Nazia and Ami for their unflagging love and support. Humza and Aasiyah, my pride, my joy, my inspiration. Shuja and Madeeha for their encouragement. Aunty Mobeen and all my family members for their prayers and well wishes. Ron, Jackie, Emily, Derek, Chris, and Dan for teaching me, guiding me, and improving me as a thinker, a writer, and a teacher. iv Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………....…ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………….…v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: A Servant to Two Masters: Non-Fiction Narratives of Anglo-Ottoman Mediation During the Elizabethan Reign………………………………………………..22 Chapter 2: The Haulter or the Chain?: Alternatives of Service in The Elizabethan Turk Play..……………………………………………………………………………………..80 Chapter 3: Scripted Turks, Silenced Turks: Competing Trans-Imperial Accounts of the Ottoman Empire During the Jacobean Period……………………………………….....142 Chapter 4: Equivocating Servants: The Function of the Mediating Servant in the Jacobean „Turk‟ Play……………………………………………………………………………...176 Epilog: Ottoman Perspectives and Other Recoverable Voices.…………...……………229 Curriculum Vitae……………………………………………………………………….247 v 1 Introduction For the Englishman living in late 16th/early 17th centuries, the figure of the Turk dominated the political events and the literary imagination of the day. Not long after she was excommunicated by the Pope, Queen Elizabeth proposed an imperial trade alliance with the Ottoman Empire. Although they supported their queen, English citizens were slow to accept the notion of a Turkish détente as the logical response to both Catholic blasphemy and the paucity of port access to the major trading sites in the Mediterranean. In the wake of these events, the literary Turk who had continued to be defined by the same demonical stereotypes as he was during the 13th and 14th centuries began to metamorphose in fascinating ways. England‟s newly formed relationship with the Ottoman Empire opened the door for more tolerant, nuanced, and even admiring representations of the Turk that competed with the stereotypically “terrible Turk” for public attention. This growing political and literary fascination with an ally who had long been considered an enemy led to a epistemic transformation of the Ottoman subject in England. This transformation was specifically carried out through the trans-imperial subject – that cross-cultural traveler who either authored his own direct encounters with the Turk, or whose encounters were fictively recounted on the English stage. The popular desire to gain exposure to the Turk, either through travelers‟ accounts that described him or through fictionalized accounts that imagined him speaking and acting for himself, gave birth to an industry that employed dramatists, preachers, merchants, ambassadors, and translators. I use the word „industry‟ to denote that each person who was employed in contributing to the Turkish episteme contributed toward the complexity of „the Turk‟ as a manufactured product of the English consciousness. A 2 number of critics (eg: Jonathan Burton, Daniel Vitkus, Gerald MacLean) that I will be alluding to have described this English interest in the Turk by referencing religion, geo- politics, and gender.1 In my dissertation, I hope to suggest that this particular historical moment of cross-cultural traffic coincided with a revolution in information exchange, prompted largely by the growth of England‟s lower “classes,” and that the Turk, as a contested figure, reveals as much about how English class relations were negotiated as it does about the categories of gender, religion, and international politics. I will propose that “the Turk” that was generated between the Elizabethan and the Jacobean periods was the epistemic product of a service-oriented struggle occurring both within the borders of England as well as along the travel routes that linked England and the Ottoman Empire.2 One of the primary responses of the subordinated groups in this struggle was to participate in this production of the Turk as a sub-cultural product – a creation of their own dense sociability - even in the apparent service of their masters. Trans-imperial agents had to partner with other agents that they wouldn‟t normally encounter or befriend simply because those other agents had well placed influence. This web of relations is what I call „dense sociability.‟ By suggesting that we can consider as united all those subgroups (eg: women, Jews, servants) that have been considered separately, I hope to suggest how the English servants‟ need to improve their social status at home contributed to the shared need for 1 See Burton, Jonathan. Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579-1624. Newark: University of Delaware, 2005; Vitkus, Daniel J. Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; MacLean, Gerald. Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire Before 1800. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 2 Although I will use „class‟ as a short-hand for this service-oriented struggle, I acknowledge that „class‟ is an imprecise word. I am more inclined towards E.P. Thompson‟s description of service as “an indefinite sociological praxis” that came to define relations between servants and their superiors. As Thompson adds, “Class and class-consciousness are always the last, not the first, stage in the real historical process.” Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working-Class. London: V. Gollancz, 1980, 17. 3 particular types of Turks. Many English writers actively participated in class struggles by fashioning Turks according to various purposes (eg: humorous, polemical, financial, political.) In addition to interrogating these purposes, I will question whether the Ottoman perspective can provide us with any interpretive purchase into understanding the English trans-imperial subjects‟ perspective. Just as critics have begun to consider that early modern notions of race and religion were not bound by borders between nations3, the trans-imperial mediators allow us to consider that the relationships