Final Report Summary - EOS (European Orientalisms)
Dr Schmuck’s Intra-European Fellowships for Career Development, undertaken in UCC’s School of English, was entitled “European Orientalisms” and lasted two years. The overall aim of the project was a comparative study of German and English Orientalist discourses – Western modes and categories of thinking about the Orient – between 1500 and 1650. The central issue addressed was whether the German and English experiences of the Orient in this period, more specifically encounters with the Ottoman Empire, differed and, in turn, produced other kinds of Orientalism. This was an important project for a number of reasons: first, it examined the viability of the prevalent concept of Orientalism as it was first formulated by Edward Said; secondly, the project addresses a gap in the existing research by providing not only the first Anglo-German comparative study on the subject, but also a synthesis of the different scholarly approaches to the field towards a poetics of Orientalism. The questions Orientalism addresses are, among others, concerned with Europe’s understanding of Islamic cultures; thus, a third important reason for this study was that it traced and analysed some of the earliest debates and experiences of these encounters. Such a historical narrative was crucial if we are to understand Europe’s relationships with its Islamic neighbours today.
This project attends to five areas of investigation based on a heterogeneous body of sources: accounts conveying military conflict and the perceived threat posed by the Ottoman Empire to Christian Europe; travel narratives and compendia composed from and based on first hand accounts; historiographical works, anthropological and political treatises on the Ottoman Empire; drama, pageants (Fastnachtsspiele) and poetry; German and English iconography and visual arts.
This study began, therefore, with an investigation of German and English texts that describe a Turkish threat to Christian Europe. The topos of the ‘Türkengefahr’ or Turkish menace pervades, to a different extend, all subsequent documents discussed in this project and constitutes one of the dominant motifs of the imago Turci at the time. It is also a key aspect which informs the Orientalist discourse as defined by Said which this study has investigated more closely. While the geo-political circumstances for Germany and England in relation to the Turkish menace are quite different, the existence of a shared discourse of a Turkish threat enables comparison. The initial discussion of this material, which includes news or ‘Zeytungen’, religious treatises and literary adaptations, focuses on key events, for instance the siege of Vienna in 1529 or the Battle of Lepanto, to chart some of the representational strategies employed. A second step examines the dissemination and circulation of some of this material in England and Germany. This dynamic process was by no means unilateral, but increasingly reciprocal. For example, King James I’s poetic response to the battle of Lepanto (1571), published in England in 1591 and 1603, was translated into a number of languages including Latin, French and German. James’ poem also circulated in a German version translated by Tobias Hübner as Das ist: Die himmlische Musa (1623).
The second area of research addresses a different kind of encounter which tests many of the assumptions and representations traced in the material in section (1). Travel writers, among them former captives, diplomats or merchants, often experienced the Ottoman Empire directly, and, as a result, added to the knowledge on the Ottomans. They also often corrected, refined but also reinforced views held by their contemporaries at home and they did so in relation to the dominant motif of a Turkish threat. While captivity accounts tend to reproduce images of threat, travellers in other capacities often observed wider aspects of the society they encountered.
The third area of research analyses German and English responses to the Ottoman Empire in historiographical texts. As a result of Ottoman expansionism in the sixteenth century, the history of the Empire became the object of intense European interest. Histories both offered a way of explaining Ottoman success and made a case for war against the Ottomans. Early available histories were often translations from Italian, French or Byzantine sources, but increasingly German and English writers compiled their own. The two authors of primary interest here are the German Leunclavius and the English historian Richard Knolles. Both authors made ample use of the broader imago Turci discussed earlier in this study, but Leunclavius’s innovative text also included Turkish material in his Neuwe Chronica Türckischer nation von Türcken selbs beschrieben (1590). In 1603, Richard Knolles had published the first English history of the Turks, The Generall Historie of the Turkes in which he had incorporated a great deal of continental material including Leunclavius’ history in its Latin translation of 1588. The significant point here is that, unlike the material in (1) and (2) the histories of these two authors demonstrate competing interpretations and representations of the Ottoman Empire. This in turn, indicates the insufficiency of Said’s Orientalist paradigm in which he argues for the West’s uniformly hostile image of the East.
The fourth area of research turns to German and English artistic responses to the Ottomans. Strongly influenced by current events and historical figures from Ottoman history, playwrights, and poets in England and Germany imagined in verse and drama anxieties of their own. The German poet Hans Sachs, for instance, composed poems on the siege of Vienna in 1529, while the humanist Johannes Prasinus composed a Latin tragedy on the subject of Turkish atrocities in his Philaemus Tragaedia (1548). In England a number of Turk plays emerged following England’s initiation of commercial relations with the Ottomans in 1581; an event reflected in Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London (c. 1581). It is in this research field that the experience of the Ottoman Empire reflects most visibly the different strategies and portrayals of the Turks between Germany and England.
The final research area turns to European visual arts and iconography, drawing on the materials found. Like a shorthand for the multiplicity of experiences with the Ottoman Empire and accessible without language barriers, these images convey the complexities of Europe’s encounters with the Ottoman Empire. A comparative examination of visual representations of the ‘Orient’ for this period not only adds to our understanding of the overall development of these portrayals, but will also uncover some of the specific differences and similarities between Germany and England.
The results of this project represent an innovative reappraisal of an established problem, by bringing to consciousness some of the finer, neglected strategies that inform geographically specific Orientalisms. The main results were:
• Two book chapters (published); one article (under review)
• Three draft chapters of Histories of Islam: perspectives and uses in early modern English writings
• 4 conference papers (listed below).
There is no project website, but see: http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/A014/sschmuck .
This project attends to five areas of investigation based on a heterogeneous body of sources: accounts conveying military conflict and the perceived threat posed by the Ottoman Empire to Christian Europe; travel narratives and compendia composed from and based on first hand accounts; historiographical works, anthropological and political treatises on the Ottoman Empire; drama, pageants (Fastnachtsspiele) and poetry; German and English iconography and visual arts.
This study began, therefore, with an investigation of German and English texts that describe a Turkish threat to Christian Europe. The topos of the ‘Türkengefahr’ or Turkish menace pervades, to a different extend, all subsequent documents discussed in this project and constitutes one of the dominant motifs of the imago Turci at the time. It is also a key aspect which informs the Orientalist discourse as defined by Said which this study has investigated more closely. While the geo-political circumstances for Germany and England in relation to the Turkish menace are quite different, the existence of a shared discourse of a Turkish threat enables comparison. The initial discussion of this material, which includes news or ‘Zeytungen’, religious treatises and literary adaptations, focuses on key events, for instance the siege of Vienna in 1529 or the Battle of Lepanto, to chart some of the representational strategies employed. A second step examines the dissemination and circulation of some of this material in England and Germany. This dynamic process was by no means unilateral, but increasingly reciprocal. For example, King James I’s poetic response to the battle of Lepanto (1571), published in England in 1591 and 1603, was translated into a number of languages including Latin, French and German. James’ poem also circulated in a German version translated by Tobias Hübner as Das ist: Die himmlische Musa (1623).
The second area of research addresses a different kind of encounter which tests many of the assumptions and representations traced in the material in section (1). Travel writers, among them former captives, diplomats or merchants, often experienced the Ottoman Empire directly, and, as a result, added to the knowledge on the Ottomans. They also often corrected, refined but also reinforced views held by their contemporaries at home and they did so in relation to the dominant motif of a Turkish threat. While captivity accounts tend to reproduce images of threat, travellers in other capacities often observed wider aspects of the society they encountered.
The third area of research analyses German and English responses to the Ottoman Empire in historiographical texts. As a result of Ottoman expansionism in the sixteenth century, the history of the Empire became the object of intense European interest. Histories both offered a way of explaining Ottoman success and made a case for war against the Ottomans. Early available histories were often translations from Italian, French or Byzantine sources, but increasingly German and English writers compiled their own. The two authors of primary interest here are the German Leunclavius and the English historian Richard Knolles. Both authors made ample use of the broader imago Turci discussed earlier in this study, but Leunclavius’s innovative text also included Turkish material in his Neuwe Chronica Türckischer nation von Türcken selbs beschrieben (1590). In 1603, Richard Knolles had published the first English history of the Turks, The Generall Historie of the Turkes in which he had incorporated a great deal of continental material including Leunclavius’ history in its Latin translation of 1588. The significant point here is that, unlike the material in (1) and (2) the histories of these two authors demonstrate competing interpretations and representations of the Ottoman Empire. This in turn, indicates the insufficiency of Said’s Orientalist paradigm in which he argues for the West’s uniformly hostile image of the East.
The fourth area of research turns to German and English artistic responses to the Ottomans. Strongly influenced by current events and historical figures from Ottoman history, playwrights, and poets in England and Germany imagined in verse and drama anxieties of their own. The German poet Hans Sachs, for instance, composed poems on the siege of Vienna in 1529, while the humanist Johannes Prasinus composed a Latin tragedy on the subject of Turkish atrocities in his Philaemus Tragaedia (1548). In England a number of Turk plays emerged following England’s initiation of commercial relations with the Ottomans in 1581; an event reflected in Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London (c. 1581). It is in this research field that the experience of the Ottoman Empire reflects most visibly the different strategies and portrayals of the Turks between Germany and England.
The final research area turns to European visual arts and iconography, drawing on the materials found. Like a shorthand for the multiplicity of experiences with the Ottoman Empire and accessible without language barriers, these images convey the complexities of Europe’s encounters with the Ottoman Empire. A comparative examination of visual representations of the ‘Orient’ for this period not only adds to our understanding of the overall development of these portrayals, but will also uncover some of the specific differences and similarities between Germany and England.
The results of this project represent an innovative reappraisal of an established problem, by bringing to consciousness some of the finer, neglected strategies that inform geographically specific Orientalisms. The main results were:
• Two book chapters (published); one article (under review)
• Three draft chapters of Histories of Islam: perspectives and uses in early modern English writings
• 4 conference papers (listed below).
There is no project website, but see: http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/A014/sschmuck .