Turning Turk English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

Turning Turk looks at contact between the English and other cultures inthe early modern Mediterranean, and analyzes the representation of thatexperience on the London stage. Vitkus's book demonstrates that theEnglish encounter with exotic alterity, and the theatrical representationsinspired by that encounter, helped to form the emergent identity of an English nation that was eagerly fantasizing about having an empire but was still in the preliminary phase of its colonizing drive. Vitkus' research shows how plays about the multi-cultural Mediterranean participated in this process of identity formation, and how anxieties about religious conversion, foreign trade and miscegenation were crucial factors in the formation of that identity.

Daniel Vitkus is Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University. He is editor of Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England and Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England.

Theorizing the Exotic Other * The English and the Mediterranean * Encountering Islam * Conversion Plays * Machiavellian Merchants * Engendering Exchange * Conclusion