From Sermon to Play: Literary Representations of ‘Turks’ in Renaissance England 1550–1625

Abstract

This article explores the figure of ‘Turks’ in a number of texts ranging from sermon to play. More specifically, it addresses a variety of available representations of ‘Turks’ and considers the ways in which literary critics and cultural historians have assessed their role and significance in early modern English writings. Whether as ambassadors, partners in trade, demonised infidels, potential military allies or as characters on the commercial stage, English writers invested ‘Turks’ with controversial and frequently contradictory meanings that were both real and imagined. As a result, this cultural ‘other’ emerges as a complex construct, an idea through which Englishmen and women could reflect on their own culture and which defies easy critical categorisation.