Title Homer's Turk : how classics shaped ideas of the East / Jerry Toner

Published Cambridge, Mass. ; London, England : Harvard University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource (x, 306 pages) Contents Preface -- Classicizing Orientalisms -- The Uses of Classics -- Classics and Medieval Images of Islam --Traders and Travelers -- Gibbon's Islam -- The Roman Raj -- Empires Ancient and Modern -- Colonial Adventures -- Screen Classics -- America Roma Nova -- Notes Summary A seventeenth-century English traveler to the Eastern Mediterranean would have faced a problem in writing about this unfamiliar place: how to describe its inhabitants in a way his countrymen would understand? In an age when a European education meant mastering the Classical literature of Greece and Rome, he would naturally turn to touchstones like the Iliad to explain the exotic customs of Ottoman lands. His Turk would have been Homer's Turk. An account of epic sweep, spanning the Crusades, the Indian Raj, and the postwar decline of the British Empire, Homer's Turk illuminates how English writers of all eras have relied on the Classics to help them understand the world once called "the Orient." Ancient Greek and Roman authors, Jerry Toner shows, served as a conceptual frame of reference over long periods in which trade, religious missions, and imperial interests shaped English encounters with the East. Rivaling the Bible as a widespread, flexible vehicle of Western thought, the Classics provided a ready model for portrayal and understanding of the Oriental Other. Such image-making, Toner argues, persists today in some of the ways the West frames its relationship with the Islamic world and the rising powers of India and China. Discussing examples that range from Jacobean travelogues to Hollywood blockbusters, Homer's Turk proves that there is no permanent version of either the ancient past or the East in English writing--the two have been continually reinvented alongside each other Spanning the Crusades, the Indian Raj, and the postwar decline of the British Empire, Homer's Turk illuminates how English writers of all eras have relied on Greek and Roman literature to help them understand the world once called "the Orient." Even today, the Classics frame the West's relationship with the Islamic world, India, and China Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-301) and index Notes Print version record Subject Orientalism -- Great Britain -- History Classical literature -- Influence Travel writing -- Great Britain -- History Historiography -- Great Britain -- History 02.01 history of science and culture. HISTORY -- Asia -- General. LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Classical literature -- Influence Historiography Orientalism Travel Travel writing Oriëntalisme. Reizen. Bellettrie. Geschiedschrijving. SUBJECT Orient -- Historiography -- History Orient -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800 Orient -- Historiography Subject Asia -- Orient Great Britain Oosterse wereld. Genre/Form Electronic books Early works History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780674076280 0674076281

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