Postcolonial Scholarship and the Ottoman Figure

This book contributes to the body of postcolonial scholarship that explores the growth of imperial culture in the Romantic and early Victorian periods by focusing on the literary uses of the figure of the Turk and the Ottoman Empire.

Analysis of Turkish Literature and Travelogues

Filiz Turham analyzes Turkish Tales, novels, and travelogues from c. 1789-1846 to expose the three primary ways in which the Ottoman Other served as a strong counterimage of empire for both liberal and conservative writers.

Authors and Literary Trope

Through readings of such authors as Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Elizabeth Craven, the authors identify the Ottoman Empire as a particularly flexible trope that could be presented as noth familiar or foreign, Same or Other in a way that reflected back onto England its own vexed attitude toward its imperial success.