ID - 32072709 TI - Staging Islam in England PY - 2008 SN - 9781843841272 9781846155970 1843841274 9786612150739 1282150731 1846155975 PB - Suffolk Boydell & Brewer DB - UniCat KW - Islam and literature KW - Islam in literature. KW - Islam KW - Thematology KW - English literature KW - Drama KW - anno 1600-1699 KW - English drama KW - Religion in literature. KW - History and criticism KW - Islamic influences. KW - History KW - History and criticism. KW - Islamic countries KW - Foreign public opinion, English. KW - Literature and Islam KW - Literature KW - Religion in drama KW - Religion in poetry KW - Muslim countries UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:32072709 AB - 'This stimulating book will be welcomed by historians, literary scholars, and anyone interested in the history of the English fascination with Islam and the cultural exoticism associated with the East.' PROFESSOR GERALD MACLEAN. Transmitted via the mechanisms of trade and diplomacy and reflected through stage and press, England's cultural encounters with Islam - its peoples, its history, its territories - were fundamental to the ways in which the nation constructed itself through all the tribulations of the seventeenth century; a preoccupation with Islam permeated religious, political, diplomatic and commercial discourses to a degree that has not been recognised by standard accounts of the period. This book traces engagement with Islam in English political and dramatic life from the inauguration of the Long Parliament until the death of Charles II. It explores the reception and representation of Islam in a wide range of English writings of the period, employing close textual and historical research to trace the development of the 'Turk' from the archetype of cruelty and treachery to the complex and often contradictory figure of mid-century discourse. Throughout, it argues that Islam provided a repository of meanings ripe for transposition to Revolutionary and Restoration England, a process that transfigured the 'East' through the lens of English politics and vice-versa. ER -