A Christian Turn D Turk

The true, though well-embellished, story of the seventeenth-century English celebrity pirate, John Ward (later Yusuf Rais), who shocked Jacobean England by converting to Islam in 1608.

It will be of interest to all those interested in questions of early modern contact history, English relations with Islam and the East, English theater history, and cultural politics."--BOOK JACKET.

By examining the often marginal figure of the pirate (and also the hard-to-distinguish privateer), The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630 shows how flexibly these figures served to comment on English nationalism, international relations, and contemporary politics. The first book-length treatment of the cultural impact of Renaissance piracy, this study underlines how despite its transgressive nature, piracy can be seen as a key mechanism which served to connect peoples and regions.

Early Modern Tales of Orient is the first volume to collect together these travellers' tales and make them available to today's students and scholars. By introducing a fascinating array of accounts (of exploration, diplomatic, and commercial ventures), Kenneth Parker challenges widely-held assumptions about Early Modern encounters in the Orient. The documents assembled in Early Modern Tales of Orient have extraordinary resonance for us today. Many of the discourses which in part, emerged from those early encounters - such as Islamophobia, English Nationalism, and the Catholic/Protestant divide - are still active in contemporary society. This volume sheds a unique light on the development of a very English interest in 'the exotic'.

The religious upheavals of the early modern period and the fierce debate they unleashed about true devotion gave conversion an unprecedented urgency. With their rich variety of emotive, aesthetic and rhetoric means of expression, literature and the visual arts proved particularly well-adapted means to address, explore and represent the complex nature of conversion. At the same time, many artists and authors experimented with the notion that the expressive character of their work could cultivate a sensory experience for the viewer that enacted conversion. Indeed, focusing on conversion as one of early modern Europe’s most pressing religious issues, this volume demonstrates that conversion cannot be separated from the creative and spiritual ways in which it was given meaning. Contributors include Mathilde Bernard, John R. Decker, Xander van Eck, Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi, Lise Gosseye, Chloë Houston, Philip Major, Walter Melion, Bart Ramakers, E. Natalie Rothman, Alison Searle, Lieke Stelling, Jayme Yeo, and Federico Zuliani.

Anthropocene Theater and the Shakespearean Stage revises the anthropocentric narrative of early globalization from the perspective of the non-human world in order to demonstrate Nature's agency in determining ecological, economic, and colonial outcomes. It welcomes readers to reimagine theater history in broader terms, and to account for more non-human and atmospheric players in the otherwise anthropocentric history of Shakespearean performance. This book analyses plays, horticultural manuals, cosmetic recipes, Puritan polemics, and travel writing in order to demonstrate how the material practices of the stage both catalyze and resist early forms of globalization in an ecological arena. William Steffen addresses the role of an understudied ecological performance history in determining Shakespeare's iconic cultural status, and models how non-human players have undermined Shakespeare's authoritative role in colonial discourse. Finally, this book makes a celebratory argument for the humanities in the age of climate change, and invites interdisciplinary engagement a research community that is compelled to find strategies for cultivating a hopeful tomorrow amidst unprecedented anthropogenic environmental changes.

Following in the tradition of recent work by cultural geographers and historians of maps, this collection examines the apparently familiar figure of Robin Hood as he can be located within spaces that are geographical, cultural, and temporal. The volume is divided into two sections: the first features an interrogation of the literary and other textually transmitted spaces to uncover the critical grounds in which the Robin Hood ’legend’ has traditionally operated. The essays in Part Two take up issues related to performative and experiential space, demonstrating the reciprocal relationship between page, stage, and lived experience. Throughout the volume, the contributors contend with, among other things, modern theories of gender, literary detective work, and the ways in which the settings that once advanced court performances now include digital gaming and the enactment of ’real’ lives.

A military historian’s enlightening reassessment of the famous 16th century naval battle between the Ottoman Empire and Pope Pius V’s Holy League. The battle of Lepanto has long been considered one of the decisive naval battles of history. Yet, the savage fighting on October 7th, 1571, left the strategic map unchanged. The defeated Ottoman Turks were able to replace their losses and launch a new fleet the following year. In Lepanto 1571, historian Nic Fields reexamines the battle and concludes that its importance was psychological. It sank the perception of Ottoman dominance and the inevitability of Islam’s westward encroachment beyond the Balkans. With over 200 ships per side, it was the largest naval battle in sixteen centuries and the last major fight between fleets composed entirely of the muscle-driven galley. These slender ships were the direct descendants of the Classical trireme but carried cannon and marines bearing firearms, although massed archery and cold steel still played a major role on the fateful day. Nic Fields gives an excellent account of this fascinating and spectacular battle.