The Taming Of The Turk

For centuries the figure of ‘the Turk’ spread fascination and fear - in the theatre of war and on the theatrical stage. On the one hand, ‘the Turk’ represented a spectacular dimension, an imaginary world of pirates, sultans and odalisques; on the other hand, he stood for the actual Ottoman Empire, engaged in long-lasting confrontations and exchanges with Occidental powers. When confronted with historical circumstances - military, commercial and religious - the cliché image of ‘the Turk’ dissolves in complex combinations of potential references. The Taming of the Turk: Ottomans on the Danish Stage 1596-1896 elucidates, for the first time, three centuries of cultural history as articulated in dealings between the Kingdom of Denmark and the Ottoman Empire seen in a general European context. From the staging of ‘the Turk’ as a diabolical player in royal ceremonies of early modern times, to the appearance of harmless ‘Turkish’ entertainment figures in the late nineteenth century. Artistic, theatrical and theological conceptions co-act in paradoxical ways against a backdrop of pragmatic connections with the Ottomans. The story of this long-forgotten connection between a small northern-European nation and a mighty Oriental empire is based on a source material - plays, paintings, treaties, travelogues etc. - that has hitherto chiefly been neglected, although it played a significant role in earlier times. The images of ‘exotic’ figures sometimes even turn out to be self-images. The documents hold the keys to a number of mental and fundamental (pre)conditions, and thus even to imagery constructions of our day.

The confrontation between European countries and the expanding Ottoman Empire in the early modern era has played a major role in numerous fields of history. The aim of this book is to investigate the European-Ottoman interrelations from three angles. One deals with the circumstances: How did the Europeans meet the Turks in pragmatic and diplomatic connections? Another concerns imagery: how were the Turks depicted in literature and art? The third examines performativity: how were the Turks inserted into plays, operas and ceremonies? This book confronts mental, visual and embodied images with historical positions and conditions. The focus, therefore, is on the dynamic interactive processes of experience, embodiment and imagination in context. Bringing together Turkish and European scholars, it applies a number of research strategies used by historians to the history of art, literature, music and theatre. Contributions by Pál Ács | Robert Born | Asli Çirakman | Anne Duprat | Kate Fleet | Bent Holm | Marcus Keller | Maria Pia Pedani | Mogens Pelt | Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen | Günsel Renda | Pia Schwarz Lausten | Charlotte Colding Smith | Suna Suner | Dirk Van Waelderen

This book considers the relationship between the vogue for putting the Ottoman Empire on the English stage and the repertory system that underpinned London playmaking. The sheer visibility of 'the Turk' in plays staged between 1567 and 1642 has tended to be interpreted as registering English attitudes to Islam, as articulating popular perceptions of Anglo-Ottoman relations, and as part of a broader interest in the wider world brought home by travellers, writers, adventurers, merchants, and diplomats. Such reports furnished playwrights with raw material which, fashioned into drama, established ‘the Turk’ as a fixture in the playhouse. But it was the demand for plays to replenish company repertories to attract London audiences that underpinned playmaking in this period. Thus this remarkable fascination for the Ottoman Empire is best understood as a product of theatre economics and the repertory system, rather than taken directly as a measure of cultural and historical engagement.

Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) is the founding father of the art of theatre in the Nordic countries. He was a satirist - and university professor - who took his main inspirations from the comedies of Moliere and from the commedia dell'arte to create a number of plays that mirrored contemporary costums and conducts in a both realistic and grotesque way. Due to the psychological and philosophical strength behind the comic mask the plays have been staged and revisited ever since. In the 18th century the were part of the European canon. They should be so now again. This book presents Holberg in a European context as a reformer in the spirit of the Enlightenment even before Goldoni, Diderot and Lessing, and at the same time as an exponent of a carnivalesque tradition.

The book series "Ottomania" researches cultural transfers between the Ottoman Empire and Europe, with the performing arts as its focus. The fifth volume of the sub-series Ottoman Empire and European Theatre focuses on The Turkish Subject in Ballet and Dance from the seventeenth century to the time of Christoph W. Gluck (1714-1787). The Turkish theme was a popular topic on European ballet stages throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and most influential choreographers had 'Turkish' ballets in their repertoire. Taking as its departure point Ch. W. Gluck and Gasparo Angiolini (1741-1803), succesful composer and choreographer of ballets at the French theatre in Vienna, this publication discusses the topic from a historical perspective, presents new findings, and introduces the latest scholarly achievements of the research field. Contributions by Emre Aracı, Bruce Alan Brown, David Chataignier, Sibylle Dahms, Vera Grund, Bert Gstettner, Bent Holm, Michael Hüttler, Evren Kutlay, Dóra Kiss, Laura Naudeix, Strother Purdy, Katalin Rumpler, Käthe Springer-Dissmann, Dirk Van Waelderen, Hans Ernst Weidinger

-- Greg Bak, Early Modern Literary Studies