The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture, 1500-1630

Bernadette Andrea

University of Toronto Press, Jan 1, 2017 - History - 250 pages

Bernadette Andrea's groundbreaking study recovers and reinterprets the lives of women from the Islamic world who travelled, with varying degrees of volition, as slaves, captives, or trailing wives to Scotland and England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Andrea's thorough and insightful analysis of historical documents, visual records, and literary works focuses on five extraordinary women: Elen More and Lucy Negro, both from Islamic West Africa; Ipolita the Tartarian, a girl acquired from Islamic Central Asia; Teresa Sampsonia, a Circassian from the Safavid Empire; and Mariam Khanim, an Armenian from the Mughal Empire. By analysing these women's lives and their impact on the literary and cultural life of proto-colonial England, Andrea reveals that they are simultaneously significant constituents of the emerging Anglo-centric discourse of empire and cultural agents in their own right. The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture advances a methodology based on microhistory, cross-cultural feminist studies, and postcolonial approaches to the early modern period.

Contents

• Can the Subaltern Signify? Tracing the Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in British Literature and Culture c 15001630: 3
• The Presences of Women from the Islamic World in Late Medieval Scotland and Early Modern England: 20
• The Islamic World and the Construction of Early Modern Englishwomens Authorship Queen Elizabeth I the Tartar Girl and the TartarIndian Woman: 38
• The Islamic World and the Construction of Early Modern Englishwomens Authorship Lady Mary Wroth the TartarPersian Princess and the Tartar Ki...: 59
• Signifying Gender and Islam in Early Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors 1594 and the Grays Inn Revels: 82
• Signifying Gender and Islam in Late Shakespeare Henry VIII or All is True 1613 and British Masques of Blackness: 99
• The Intersecting Paths of Two Women from the Islamic World Teresa Sampsonia Mariam Khanim and the East India Company: 124
• Notes: 131
• Bibliography: 193
• Index: 239

About the author

Bernadette Andrea is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture, 1500-1630; G - Reference,Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series
• Author: Bernadette Andrea
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2017
• ISBN: 1487501250, 9781487501259
• Length: 250 pages
• Subjects: History / Modern / 16th Century; History / World; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / Modern / 17th Century; Literary Criticism / Renaissance; Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women; Literary Criticism / Women Authors; Social Science / Islamic Studies; Social Science / Women's Studies