Imagined, Embodied and Actual Turks in Early Modern Europe

The confrontation between European countries and the expanding Ottoman Empire in the early modern era has played a major role in numerous fields of history. The aim of this book is to investigate the European-Ottoman interrelations from three angles. One deals with the circumstances: How did the Europeans meet the Turks in pragmatic and diplomatic connections? Another concerns imagery: how were the Turks depicted in literature and art? The third examines performativity: how were the Turks inserted into plays, operas and ceremonies?This book confronts mental, visual and embodied images with historical positions and conditions. The focus, therefore, is on the dynamic interactive processes of experience, embodiment and imagination in context. Bringing together Turkish and European scholars, it applies a number of research strategies used by historians to the history of art, literature, music and theatre.Contributions by Pál Ács | Robert Born | Asli Çirakman | Anne Duprat | Kate Fleet | Bent Holm | Marcus Keller | Maria Pia Pedani | Mogens Pelt | Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen | Günsel Renda | Pia Schwarz Lausten | Charlotte Colding Smith | Suna Suner | Dirk Van Waelderen

IX Kaleidoscopic ReflectionsBent Holm and Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen (Copenhagen)PART I: THE ACTUAL TURKThe Ottoman Empire and Europe: The Making and Un-Makingof a Muslim-Orthodox PartnershipMogens Pelt (Copenhagen)The Absence of the Ottoman Empire in European HistoriographyKate Fleet (Cambridge)The Legations of the Most Serene Republic to the Sultan and theFascination of Ottoman CultureMaria Pia Pedani † (Venice)Claiming Possession through Depiction: Hungarian Humanist Envoysin the Ottoman EmpirePál Ács (Budapest)The Turks in East Central Europe, with a Focus on Hungarythe Romanian Principalities, and PolandRobert Born (Leipzig/Berlin)PART II: THE IMAGINED TURKThe Image of the Turks in European Anglophone Intellectual DiscourseAslı Çırakman (Ankara)Changing Images and Cross-Cultural Encounters: Europe and theOttoman EmpireGünsel Renda (Istanbul)Images of the Turk in Sixteenth-Century Italian Historical WritingsPia Schwarz Lausten (Copenhagen)Variations in Oriental Motifs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-CenturyEuropean LiteratureAnne Duprat (Amiens)The Turk in the Symbolic Civil Wars of France: Ally and CombatantMarcus Keller (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois)Shifting Identities Over Time: Images of the Turk in Sixteenth-CenturyGerman Biblical IllustrationsCharlotte Colding Smith (Bremerhaven)The Truthful Image(s) of the Turk(s)Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen (Copenhagen)PART III: THE EMBODIED TURK"Celebrating the Orient": The Ottomans in Printsand Festivitiesin the Habsburg NetherlandsDirk Van Waelderen (Leuven)Turks in Royal Rituality: Apocalyptic Historiographyin Performative PracticeBent Holm (Copenhagen)"Der türkische Gesandte samt sein Gefolge": Theatre andOttoman Diplomacy to Vienna in the Eighteenth CenturySuna Suner (Vienna)Prismatic RefractionsBent Holm and Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen (Copenhagen)APPENDIXBibliographyNamesPlacesCurricula Vitae