The Sultan Speaks : Dialogue in English Plays and Histories About the Ottoman Turks

The Sultan Speaks is the first study of English historical plays about the Turks in relation to their sources and analogues, including histories originating in Greek, Arabic, and Turkish. Drawing on Bakhtin's concept of the dialogic and on narrative theory, McJannet traces the transmission of these eastern sources and analyzes Richard Knolles's citation of the Turks' own chronicles, the historiographic equivalent of letting the sultan speak. She demonstrates that while the historians increasingly contain the sultan's words with adverse authorial commentary, playwrights such as Marlowe and Fulke Greville use both dialogue and commentary to enhance the sultan's stature and to mitigate his negative acts. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-14 Preliminaries: Historicizing Rage and Representing Historical Speech....Pages 15-31 Sixteenth-Century Histories of the Turks: Shocking Speech and Edifying Dicta....Pages 33-61 Marlowe’s Turks....Pages 63-89 “History Written by the Enemy”: Eastern Sources about the Ottomans....Pages 91-117 Citing “the Turkes’ Own Chronicles”: Knolles’ Generall Historie of the Turkes....Pages 119-140 Horrible Acts and Wicked Offenses: Suleyman and Mustapha in Narrative and Drama....Pages 141-168 After Knolles: William Seaman’s the Reign of Sultan Orchan....Pages 169-179 Back Matter....Pages 181-243 The first study of English historical plays about the Turks, using works in Greek, Arabic, and Turkish. Drawing on Bakhtin's concept of the dialogic, McJannet shows that instead of adverse authorial commentary playwrights such as Marlowe and Fulke Greville use dialogue and commentary to enhance the sultan's stature and mitigate his negative acts. 'The Sultan Speaks' is a study of English historical plays about the Turks in relation to their sources and analogues, including works originating in Greek, Arabic, and Turkish