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

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 West’s 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 period’s drama to reflect this overturn in the world’s power balances, as well as the intricate dynamics of England’s intensified contact with Islam in the Mediterranean. Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 1 Introduction 11 2 Erasing the Cultural and Religious Difference 35 3 The Muslim Woman and A Christian Turned Turk 69 4 Redeeming the Islamic Eve Inside the Ottoman Palace 97 5 “Hell’s Perfect Character” 125 6 The Island Princess 153 Conclusion 175 Appendix A 179 Bibliography 181 Index 189 About the Author 193 This is a multidisciplinary study that reads the early modern literary and historical representations of the Muslim woman against both the European politics towards Islam and the domestic constructions of gender and social hierarchies in England.