Uniting twelve original studies by scholars of early modern history, literature, and the arts, this collection is the first that foregrounds the dialectical quality of early modern Orientalism by taking a broad interdisciplinary perspective. Dialectics of Orientalism demonstrates how texts and images of the sixteenth and seventeenth century from across Europe and the New World are better understood as part of a dynamic and transformative orientalist discourse rather than a manifestation of the supposed dichotomy between the 'East' and the 'West.' The volume's central claim is that early modern orientalist discourses are fundamentally open, self-critical, and creative. Analyzing a varied corpus-from German and Dutch travelogues to Spanish humanist treaties, French essays, Flemish paintings, and English diaries-this collection thus breathes fresh air into the critique of Orientalism and provides productive new perspectives for the study of east-west and indeed globalized exchangesin the early modern world.

Autorentext

Marcus Keller is Associate Professor of French at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. In his research he focuses on sixteenth and seventeenth-century French literature and culture. He is the author of Figurations of France: Literary Nation-Building in Times of Crisis (1550-1650) (2011) and editor of The Turk of Early Modern France (2013).

Javier Irigoyen-García is Associate Professor of Spanish Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. His research focuses on the representation of race and ethnicity in early modern Spain. He has published The Spanish Arcadia: Sheep Herding, Pastoral Discourse, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Spain (2013) and the forthcoming Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia.

Inhalt

Introduction.- Part I. ORIENTALIST EPISTEMOLOGIES.- A Captive Library between Morocco and Spain (Oumelbanine Zhiri).- Political Pragmatism, Humanist Ideals, and Early Modern Orientalism in Busbecq's Turkish Letters (Kaya ahin).- Competing Forms of Knowledge in Adam Olearius's Orientalische Reise (1647) (Aigi Heero and Maris Saagpakk).- Part II. EMPIRE AND ITS ORIENTS.- The Discourse on the Chinese and Muslim Worlds in the Hispanic Empire (New Spain and Castile, 1550-1650) (José L. Gasch-Tomás and Natalia Maillard Álvarez).- Mapping Islam in the Philippines: *Moro *Anxieties of the Spanish Empire in the Pacific (Ana María Rodríguez-Rodríguez).- The Invention of Europe and the Intellectual Struggle for Political Imagination: Spanish Humanism on the Ottomans (Natalio Ohanna).- Part III. ORIENTALISM AND THE IDEA OF EUROPE.- Europe, France, and the Ottoman Empire in the Essais: Montaigne's Dialectics (Marcus Keller).- Mehmed II and His Woman: The Idea of Europe in Early Modern Representations of a Female Captive (David Moberly).- Was There a Pan-European Orientalism? Icelandic and Flemish Perspectives on Captivity in Muslim North Africa (1628-1656) (Toby Wikström).- Part IV. VISUAL DIALECTICS.- Christian of Ottoman Europe in Sixteenth-Century Costume Books (Robyn D. Radway).- Amazon Battle and the Seventeenth-Century Antwerp Painting Canon (Lisa Rosenthal).- The Architectural Setting of 'Empire': the English Experience of Ottoman Spectacle in the Late Seventeenth Century and Its Consequences (Lydia M. Soo)