Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire in Romantic and Victorian Culture - by Piya Pal-Lapinski (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examining the transformation of the Ottoman empire (and its Byzantine ghosts) through an examination of Constantinople/Istanbul, this book looks at the effect of the city's complicated history on Romantic and Victorian writers and artists.

Book Synopsis

Piya Pal-Lapinski explores the transformation of the Ottoman empire (and its Byzantine ghosts) during the period 1800-1876 in terms of its crucial impact on British and European transnational identities.
From Romantic Byzantium to operatic sultans and vampiric janissaries, the arc of this book takes on a fascinating but often overlooked area of 19th century literary studies - the encounter with Constantinople/Istanbul, "the diamond between two sapphires" on the Bosphorus and the effect of the city's complicated history on Romantic /Victorian writers and artists.

Drawing on unpublished, archival material on Thomas Hope and Julia Pardoe, she provides fresh readings of these writers as well as Byron, Disraeli, Scott and Mary Shelley, among others. Taking up the problems posed by the existence of a global, cosmopolitan empire with its center in Istanbul and control over borderlands known as "Turkey- in -Europe," the book examines these issues against the background of the rise of nationalist movements and ethnic affiliations in the 19th century. Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire in Romantic and Victorian Culture proposes a new approach to understanding the final century of a significant non-Western, Islamic empire.

Review Quotes

"Cutting through conventional binaries such as 'East' and 'West', 'Orient' and 'Europe', Piya Pal-Lapinski explores the ambiguities and restores the wonder of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, as experienced by 19th-century British writers in their European context. The author's personal fascination with the city today, no less than in history and the literary imagination, leaps off the page in this highly original study." --Roderick Beaton, Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature, King's College London

"Wide-ranging, deeply learned, and razor sharp, this is the book on Istanbul and Ottoman Turkey that scholars of Romantic and Victorian literature have been waiting for. Pal-Lipinski brilliantly illuminates the imaginative and cultural influence of Istanbul on emerging ideas of identity, empire, and transnationalism, giving us fresh ways of thinking about both the past and the present. An instant must-read." --Andrew Stauffer, Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA.

About the Author

Piya Pal-Lapinski is Associate Professor of English at Bowling Green State University, USA. She is the author of The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth Century British Fiction and Culture (2004) and co-editor of Byron and the Politics of Freedom and Terror (2011). Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary and global contexts of nineteenth century literature and its intersections with contemporary theory.