Turk Plays

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Brinda Charry (Keene State College)
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Those plays written and performed in Elizabethan and Jacobean England which drew their inspiration from European accounts of Turks and the Ottoman Empire are often collectively referred to as “Turk plays” by modern scholars. The Ottoman Empire was expanding through northern Africa and Eastern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and would besiege Vienna in 1683, and the military strength and economic prowess of this alien Islamic power on the borders of Europe moved a number of English playwrights to explore Euro-Muslim (or more specifically Euro-Turkish) encounters in their writings. These plays have attracted much scholarly attention in recent years, with growing interest in Anglo-Islamic relations in the early modern period. Some well-known “Turk Plays” include…

835 words

Citation: Charry, Brinda. "Turk Plays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 August 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1738, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1738 Turk Plays 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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