Abstract
During the sixteenth century, most sources about the Ottomans available in England were translations of continental works. Typically, many years separated the originals and the translations, and consequently, these works did not represent a single voice speaking from a unique historical moment. They were the product of a scholarly dialogue: the Catholic authors are themselves ambivalent about the Turks, and the translators complicate matters further, adding Protestant commentary and providing competing versions of events in the margins. While the originals were available to educated English readers (as they were to the translators), the translations naturally found a wider audience. Moreover, by choosing a particular text (old or new, scholarly or sensational) the translators shaped the discourse about the Ottomans circulating in England. One can speculate about how the originals were received by other readers in the privacy of their libraries, but the translators explicitly discuss their motives for undertaking the work, and their translations show how they “read” the originals.1 While a word-for-word comparison of source text and translation is beyond the scope of this chapter, a comparison of the author’s and the translator’s prefaces (where both are available) and an analysis of the translator’s marginalia and other apparatus provide some evidence of where and how they differed. Often cited exclusively for evidence of hostility to the Turks, the source texts construct contradictory images: sultans condemned for the bloody deeds by which they gained the throne are later portrayed as rulers of accomplishment, wisdom, and justice; denounced as sensual or barbaric in one passage, the Turks may be praised for near angelic piety in the next.
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Chapter 2 Sixteenth-Century Histories of the Turks: Shocking Speech and Edifying Dicta
For a general study of English readers’ practices, see D.R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Norman Jones, “The Adaptation of Tradition: The Image of the Turk in Protestant England,” East European Quarterly 12, no.2 (1978): 161–175, esp. pp. 163 and 168.
See for example, Daniel J. Vitkus’s introduction to Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 3–4. Vitkus acknowledges that Ottoman military success against the Catholic powers was viewed by English Protestants as “not altogether negative” (7–8).
Brandon Beck, From the Rising of the Sun: English Images of the Ottoman Empire to 1715 (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), p. 32.
Peter Ashton, trans., A shorte treatise upon the Turkes Chronicles (London, 1546), fol. [cxxxiiv]. I cite the copy in Houghton Library at Harvard University. [Future references will be given parenthetically by folio number.]
D.K. Money, “Ashton, Peter,” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). A prebendary is a member of a Cathedral or collegiate church who occasionally officiates at services.
John Shute, trans., Two very notable Commentaries. The one of the originall of the Turcks and Empire of the house of Ottomanno written by Andrewe Cambine, and thother of the warres of the Turcke against George Scanderbeg… translated oute of Italian into English by John Shute (London, 1562). I cite the microfrm copy in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. [Future references will be given parenthetically by folio number.]
On the importance of this aspect of British history to the later empire, see Bruce McLeod, The Geography of English Literature, 1580–1745 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. i.
Zachary Jones, trans., The History of George Castriot Surnamed Scanderbeg… Newly translated out of French into English by Z.I. Gentleman (London, 1596). I cite the electronic copy in Early English Books Online.
Thomas Newton, trans., A Notable Historie of the Saracens (London, 1575), fol. [95v]. I cite the copy in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Richard Knolles’ translation as excerpted in Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman, Christopher Marlowe: the Plays and their Sources (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 149.
William Brown, “Marlowe’s Debasement of Bajazeth: Foxe’s Acts and Monuments and Tamburlaine, Part 1” Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971): 38–48, esp. p. 41.
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© 2006 Linda McJannet
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McJannet, L. (2006). Sixteenth-Century Histories of the Turks: Shocking Speech and Edifying Dicta. In: The Sultan Speaks. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601499_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601499_3
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