Abstract
While captivity narratives have long been recognized as an important field of research in American Studies, the substantial body of autobiographical tales portraying captivity in the Muslim world published in England between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth century has only recently begun to attract the attention of literary scholars. Despite a number of important pioneering works, however, British captivity narratives have not only remained at the margins of early modern studies, but even where they have received attention they have mainly been treated as historical source material. In other words, there has hardly been any interest in the genre of captivity narratives as a textual and literary phenomenon in its own right. As a consequence, most of the published stories in question lack thorough narrative analysis, although the genre is situated at the intriguing intersection of travel literature, religious writing (e. g. tales of martyrdom), and prose fiction, and arguably constitutes one of the forerunners of the early novel. This paper proposes that we need to go beyond the limits of current research by rereading British tales of captivity with a stronger interest in their narrative composition, their discursive and generic contexts, and the pragmatics of publishing. Only in this way it will be possible to both do justice and draw more sustained attention to this highly fascinating and yet still understudied genre of literary texts.
Works Cited
Allison, Robert J. 1995/2000. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World 1776–1815. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226308579.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Andrea, Bernadette D. and Linda McJannet. 2011. “Introduction: Islamic Worlds in Early Modern English Literature”. In: Bernadette D. Andrea and Linda McJannet (eds.). Early Modern England and Islamic Worlds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 1–20.10.1057/9780230119826_1Search in Google Scholar
Baepler, Paul M. 1995. “The Barbary Captivity Narrative in Early America”. Early American Literature 30.2: 95–120.Search in Google Scholar
Barnby, Henry. 1969. “The Sack of Baltimore”. Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 74: 101–129.Search in Google Scholar
Bekkaoui, Khalid. 2011. White Women Captives in North Africa: Narrative of Enslavement, 1735–1830. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230294493Search in Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand. 1949/1995. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. 2 vols. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Burton, Jonathan. 2005. Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579–1624. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press.Search in Google Scholar
Childs, Peter, Jean J. Weber and Patrick Williams. 2006. Post-Colonial Theory and Literatures: African Caribbean and South Asian. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.Search in Google Scholar
Colley, Linda. 2002. Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600–1850. London: Pimlico.Search in Google Scholar
Colley, Linda. 2003. “Perceiving Low Literature: The Captivity Narrative”. Essays in Criticism 53.3: 199–218.10.1093/eic/53.3.199Search in Google Scholar
Coxere, Edward. 1946. Adventures by Sea of Edward Coxere. Ed. E. H. W. Meyerstein. New York/London: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Davis, Lennard. 1983. Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Davis, Robert C. 2003. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar
Dimmock, Matthew. 2005. New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England. Aldershot: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar
Daborne, Robert. 1612/2000. “A Christian Turnd Turke: Or, The Tragicall Lives and Deaths of The Two Famous Pyrates, Ward and Dansiker”. In: Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.). Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England. New York: Columbia University Press. 148–239.Search in Google Scholar
“Escape: Barbary Coast Captivity Narratives (1550–1780)”. Issued by the University of Innsbruck, 16 February 2016. <https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/escape/> [accessed 4 May 2017].Search in Google Scholar
Friedman, Ellen G. 1983. Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fox, John. 1589/2001. “‘The Worthie Enterprise of John Fox an Englishman in Delivering 266 Christians out of the Captivite of the Turkes at Alexandria,’ in Richard Hakluyt Principal Navigations (1589)”. In: Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.). Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives From Early Modern England. New York: Columbia University Press. 59–70. Search in Google Scholar
Foxe, John. 1610. Actes and Monuments of Matters Most Speciall and Memorable, Happening in the Church: With an Universall Historie of the Same: Wherein is Set Forth at Large the Whole Race and Course of the Church From the Primitive Age to these Later Times [...]. At London: Printed for the Company of Stationers.Search in Google Scholar
Fricke, Stephanie. 2016. “Narrating the Self, Narrating the Other: British Barbary Captivity Narratives of the Long Eighteenth Century”. Unpubl. Habilitation Thesis, LMU München.Search in Google Scholar
Garcés, María A. 2002. Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive’s Tale. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.10.2307/j.ctv1622n4tSearch in Google Scholar
Gee, Henry and William John Hardy (eds.). 1896. Documents Illustrative of English Church History. London: Macmillan. <https://archive.org/details/documentsillustrx00geeh> [accessed 11 August 2017].Search in Google Scholar
Greene, Molly. 2010. Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterranean. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400834945Search in Google Scholar
Harper, James G. 2011. “Introduction”. In: James G. Harper (ed.). The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery Before Orientalism. Farnham: Ashgate. 1–20.Search in Google Scholar
Hasleton, Richard. 1595/2001. “Strange and Wonderfull Things. Happened to Richard Hasleton, Borne at Braintree in Essex, in His Ten Yeares Travailes in Many Forraine Countries. Penned as He Delivered It From His Owne Mouth”. In: Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.). Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives From Early Modern England. New York: Columbia University Press.73–95.Search in Google Scholar
Helgason, þorsteinn. 1997. “Historical Narrative as Collective Therapy: The Case of the Turkish Raid in Iceland”. Scandinavian Journal of History 22.4: 275–289.10.1080/03468759708579357Search in Google Scholar
Kabbani, Rana. 1994/2008. Imperial Fictions: Europe’s Myths of the Orient. London: Saqi.Search in Google Scholar
Knutson, Roslyn L. 1996. “Elizabethan Documents, Captivity Narratives, and the Market for Foreign History Plays”. English Literary Renaissance 26.1: 75–110.10.1111/j.1475-6757.1996.tb01484.xSearch in Google Scholar
Kugler, Emily M. N. 2012. Sway of the Ottoman Empire on English Identity in the Long Eighteenth Century. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 209. Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill.10.1163/9789004225435Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, James R. 1990. “Savages of the Seas: Barbary Captivity Tales and Images of Muslims in the Early Republic”. Journal of American Culture 13.2: 75–84.10.1111/j.1542-734X.1990.1302_75.xSearch in Google Scholar
McJannet, Linda. 2006. The Sultan Speaks: Dialogue in English Plays and Histories About the Ottoman Turks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar
MacLean, Gerald M. and Nabil I. Matar. 2011. Britain and the Islamic World: 1558–1713. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203185.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
MacLean, Gerald M. 2004. The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire 1580–1720. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.Search in Google Scholar
MacLean, Gerald M. 2007. “When West Looks East: Some Recent Studies in Early Modern Muslim Cultures”. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7.1: 96–112.10.1353/jem.2007.0005Search in Google Scholar
Massinger, Philip. 1630/2010. The Renegado, Or, The Gentleman of Venice. Ed. Michael Neil. London: Methuen.Search in Google Scholar
Matar, Nabil I. 1998. Islam in Britain, 1558–1685. Repr. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511582738Search in Google Scholar
Matar, Nabil I. 2001. “English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the Middle East: 1577–1625”. Renaissance Quarterly 54.2: 553–572.10.2307/3176787Search in Google Scholar
Matar, Nabil I. 2005. Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.Search in Google Scholar
Matar, Nabil I. 2009. Europe Through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/mata14194Search in Google Scholar
Matar, Nabil I. 2014. British Captives From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760. Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill.10.1163/9789004264502Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Connor. 2010. The Cambridge Introduction to Edward Said. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511780769Search in Google Scholar
Morgan, Joseph. 1728–1729. A Complete History of Algiers: To Which Is Prefixed, An Epitome of the General History of Barbary, From the Earliest Times [...]. 2 vols. London: J. Bettenham.Search in Google Scholar
OED = The Oxford English Dictionary. 2000–. Online Version March 2017. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/15400?redirectedFrom=barbary&> [accessed 4 May 2017].Search in Google Scholar
Pepys, Samuel. 1660/1970. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. 2 vols. Ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews. London: Bell.10.2307/3713771Search in Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203163672Search in Google Scholar
Quinn, Frederick. 2008. The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325638.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Rowlandson, Mary W. 1682. The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, Together, With the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Samuel Green.Search in Google Scholar
Raman, Shankar. 2011. Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9780748636853Search in Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. 1978/2003. Orientalism. Reprinted with a New Preface. London: Penguin Books.Search in Google Scholar
Sayre, Gordon M. 2010. “Renegades from Barbary: The Transnational Turn in Captivity Studies”. American Literary History 22.2: 347–359.10.1093/alh/ajq009Search in Google Scholar
Schleck, Julia. 2011. Telling True Tales of Islamic Lands: Forms of Mediation in English Travel Writing 1575–1630. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Snader, Joe. 2000. Caught Between Worlds: British Captivity Narratives in Fact and Fiction. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.Search in Google Scholar
Starr, G. A. 1965. “Escape From Barbary: A Seventeenth-Century Genre”. Huntington Library Quarterly 29: 35–52.10.2307/3816618Search in Google Scholar
Vitkus, Daniel J. 2000. Introduction. In: Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.). Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Vitkus, Daniel J. 2001. Introduction to “Richard Hasleton, Strange and Wonderfull Things Happened to Richard Hasleton...in His Ten Years Travails in Many Foreign Countries (1595)”. In: Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.). Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives From Early Modern England. New York: Columbia University Press. 70–71.Search in Google Scholar
Vitkus, Daniel J. 2003. Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean 1570–1630. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-137-05292-6Search in Google Scholar
Voigt, Lisa Beth. 2009. Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulations of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/9780807838747_KnottSearch in Google Scholar
Webbe, Edward. 1590/1999. “The Rare and Most Wonderfull Things Which Edw. Webbe an Englishman Borne, Hath Seene and Passed in His Troublesome Travailes”. In: Kenneth Parker (ed.). Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology. London/New York: Routledge. 36–47.Search in Google Scholar
Weiss, Gillian L. 2011. Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9780804777841Search in Google Scholar
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
