Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Traffic and Turning
26
Introduction
Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning
Islam and English Drama, 1579-1624
Introduction
Jonathan Burton
Traffic and Turning is part of a recent renaissance in the study of Islam and Anglo-Ottoman relations, in early modern literary studies.
Burton argues that the English discourse was not entirely coherent in terms of Ottoman power.
- rather, contradictory representations of Muslims vary according to domestic political concerns and the need to construct English identities
He pay attention to "Old World" relations and focuses on multicultural exchange by using the term "trafficking", to include both differences and common values.
- emphasizing that the Ottoman Empire's trade and cultural exchange with Europe has caused the European "Renaissance"
Edward W. Said
Orientalism, Edward W. Said
- "Orientalism" is a book by Edward W. Said, published in 1978
- the term "Orientalism" presents the historically domineering representations of the West for the "East"
- Eastern societies are seen as exotic, primitive, inferior and are described as "the Others"
- this Western mindset allowed to rationalize much of the imperial domination of the Eastern world throughout history
relation to
Said´s
Burton´s
"Orientalist Thesis"
Burton´s Relations
Said shows how the West had misrepresented Muslim civilization and culture to justify its rule.
Critics show that the West had not really always vilified or demonized the Islamic world, especially when the West did not yet have the military or economic power to do so.
Burton argues that Early Modern British Drama show "representations of Islam were complex and nuanced, moved by a variable nexus of economic, political, and cultural forces" (11).
He believes that Arab and Ottoman representations and texts found their way onto the English stage and produced a Muslim who was not always polarised or demonised.
relation to
Said´s
Burton´s
"Contrapuntal Analysis"
to Said´s Thesis
Burton recognizes the value of Said's "contrapuntal analysis" (47).
He argues for the need to include texts that have been unused or marginalized - especially texts from the Arab and Ottoman heritage.
- in his view, such texts could show that English literature contains Muslim self-representations and definitions
Historical/ Cultural Relations to Orientalism
"In the period between 1579 and 1624 over sixty dramatic works featuring Islamic themes, characters, or settings were produced in England" (11).
Historical/ Cultural Relations
Burton mentions that we need to "re-Orient" our ideas about the renaissance of the 19th century, while acknowledging the marginal position of England and Europe in relation to "global systems dominated by Chinese, Indian, Persian, and Ottoman empires” (38).
"The ways in which we imagine or construct difference today depend in part upon past notions of difference that remain sedimented in present structures and which continue to inform our assumptions or systems of understanding" (12).
"Traffic and Turning makes use of the term trafficking to emphasize the bilateral mercantile and cultural exchanges that characterized Anglo-Islamic encounters, ultimately suggesting that trafficking is essential to not only the drama of the period, but also more generally, the construction of a European Renaissance" (16).
"Both the term trafficking and the idiom turn Turk first appeared in the English vernacular early in the sixteenth century, concurrent with a growing incidence of Englishmen choosing to abandon Christian England to pursue their fortunes in the Islamic world. Those who converted to Islam were described as "turning Turk," [...]" (16).
Conclusion
Conclusion
Traffic and Turning is an useful analysis of the relationship between trade and religious conversion, from and to Islam.
Burton brings together a variety of primary sources and cites numerous scholars of Anglo-Islamic relations in the early modern period.
Moreover he presents three types of inventories: "the textual-historical, the experiential, and the domestic" (22)
These are older accounts of:
- intercultural exchange (text-historical),
- contemporary intercultural exchange (experiential),
- European notions of difference
- related to Islam or Turkishness (domestic)