The Ottoman Empire, Southeastern European Literature, and Postcolonial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-393
Author(s):  
Eralda L. Lameborshi
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
European Literature ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

Abstract The Ottoman Empire shaped much of the Mediterranean world and yet, postcolonial scholarship has developed very few tools that engage with it as a pre-modern and pre-capitalist empire. Given its influence, it is necessary to understand the Ottoman Empire as a colonial force, especially in literatures that represent its reign. Southeastern European literature is ripe for such analysis as it seeks to understand the Ottoman legacy in Southeastern Europe, and to account for the ways in which the Ottoman Empire’s imperial model created worlds within worlds, where regions not located in the imperial center were not peripheries but provincial centers. The works of Ivo Andrić, Ismail Kadare, and Meša Selimović fictionalize history in an attempt to show how history itself happens in these provincial centers. Audiences become aware of the Ottoman presence as a droning hum in the background with a lasting cultural, linguistic, and religious legacy.

scholarly journals The Mediterranean World and the ‘Turk’ in Shakespeare’s Representation of the British Empire

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Houria HALIL ◽  
Bouteldja Riche
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Modern Form

This research explores Shakespeare’s representation of the so-called British Empire in its contact with other jostling empires, most notably the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. To this end, four of Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603), The Merchant of Venice (1596), The Tempest (1611), and Cymbeline (1611) are taken understudy. By considering the Postcolonial historicist approach developed by literary scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt and Edward Said, the research argues that the issues of imperial relationships in Shakespeare are not solely centered on the transatlantic colony of Virginia, but it was also extended to the Mediterranean basin. The latter, during Tudor England and, later, Stuart Britain had much more trade and diplomatic activity than on the Atlantic seaboard. This economic activity created a cosmopolitan zone of contact wherein people of the Orient elbowed people from the West. This encounter gave rise to a pre-modern form of Orientalism, which is reflected in Shakespeare’s celebration of marital-cum-political endogamous relationships in his four plays mentioned earlier.

Colliding Empires

2018 ◽  
pp. 50-77
Author(s):  
Bonnie Effros
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
North African ◽  
French Empire ◽  
The North ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Imperial Identity ◽  
The Mediterranean

This chapter explores how the French discovery of Roman ruins in Algeria was used to legitimate its annexation of the territory. Intellectuals and politicians argued that the Ottoman Empire was illegitimate; France was the true heir of the shared Latinate civilization created by the Roman Empire. The new French Empire would simply reunite the Mediterranean world. These efforts were, however, thwarted by both human and material actors. Parisian museum administrators thought that the North African finds were of low quality and not of much interest. French colonists argued, by contrast, that the Roman artifacts should stay in Algeria, to help build a French imperial identity. And the things themselves resisted; they broke when soldiers tried to extract them and their weight sank the ships used to transport them. The chapter then suggests that nineteenth-century campaigns to steal, export, and re-signify art and antiquities sometimes fell short of their ambitions.

Constantine in North African History

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Joshua Cole
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
African History ◽  
North African ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Physical Setting ◽  
The Mediterranean

This chapter introduces the physical setting of Constantine, and the population movements in the Mediterranean world that shaped its history. The diverse peoples of the region—including Berbers, Arabs, and Jews—arrived in several waves of migration, and lived as part of the Ottoman Empire before the French conquest in 1830.

scholarly journals The Mediterranean World and the ‘Turk’ in Shakespeare’s Representation of the British Empire

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Houria HALIL ◽  
Bouteldja RICHE
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Modern Form

This research explores Shakespeare’s representation of the so-called British Empire in its contact with other jostling empires, most notably the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. To this end, four of Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603), The Merchant of Venice (1596), The Tempest (1611), and Cymbeline (1611) are taken understudy. By considering the Postcolonial historicist approach developed by literary scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt and Edward Said, the research argues that the issues of imperial relationships in Shakespeare are not solely centered on the transatlantic colony of Virginia, but it was also extended to the Mediterranean basin. The latter, during Tudor England and, later, Stuart Britain had much more trade and diplomatic activity than on the Atlantic seaboard. This economic activity created a cosmopolitan zone of contact wherein people of the Orient elbowed people from the West. This encounter gave rise to a pre-modern form of Orientalism, which is reflected in Shakespeare’s celebration of marital-cum-political endogamous relationships in his four plays mentioned earlier.

Crossing the Pomerium

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Religion And Law ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city—a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. This book explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule. The book probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. The book explores a problem faced by generations of Romans—how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.

Diachronic trends in the evolution of civilizations in the Nile valley

2018 ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Элеонора Кормышева ◽  
Eleonora Kormysheva
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

The diachronic trends in socio-economic and cultural development of the societies in the Nile valley are revealed based on the materials from Giza necropolis (the 3rd millennium BC) and the settlement of Abu Erteila (1st century AD). The research made it possible to trace the typological similarities in the evolution of the studied societies in cultural and historical contexts. The main fields of the research were epigraphy, iconography, social history, and material culture. Many previously unknown monuments discovered by Russian archaeologists in Egypt and Sudan were introduced into scientific discourse. The basis was created for studying the Nile valley as a contact zone between the Mediterranean world and Africa.

America and the Mediterranean World, 1776-1882

1970 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
William Stinchcombe ◽  
James A. Field
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

Medieval Transculturality in the Mediterranean from a Literary-Historical Perspective. The Case of Rudolf von Ems’ Der guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220–1225)

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Mediterranean Studies ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract Most scholars working on the concept of transculturality consider it a modern phenomenon, but we can discover forms of transculturality already in the Middle Ages, and this in terms of political, scholarly, artistic, medical and literary exchanges. Within the framework of Mediterranean Studies, this article examines the extraordinary case of Rudolf von Ems’ Der guote Gêrhart (ca. 1220–1225) which illustrates how much the Mediterranean world proved to be a highly useful backdrop for the description of transcultural exchanges between the protagonist and a Moroccan castellan, Stranmûr. The verse narrative is based on the experiences of a wealthy Cologne merchant who proves to be extraordinarily open to other cultures, languages and religions and encounters an equally minded Muslim lord. We would not be far off by describing the poet’s projections as a case of medieval tolerance.

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