Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature

Download or read book Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature written by Bernadette Andrea and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-17 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative study, Bernadette Andrea focuses on the contributions of women and their writings in the early modern cultural encounters between England and the Islamic world. She examines previously neglected material, such as the diplomatic correspondence between Queen Elizabeth I and the Ottoman Queen Mother Safiye at the end of the sixteenth century, and resituates canonical accounts, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's travelogue of the Ottoman empire at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Her study advances our understanding of how women negotiated conflicting discourses of gender, orientalism, and imperialism at a time when the Ottoman empire was hugely powerful and England was still a marginal nation with limited global influence. This book is a significant contribution to critical and theoretical debates in literary and cultural, postcolonial, women's, and Middle Eastern studies.