Tales of the Seraglio

This chapter argues that the oriental woman in narrative accounts figures not only the enclosing and constraining power of despotism but also resistance to it. In so doing, she represents an axis of temporality (the narrative time of storytelling and deferral of its conclusion, the keeping of her head quite literally) which counters the axis of space and looking associated with the oriental male. Her agency is that of the tongue and of time, his is that of the eye and of the masterful control of space. The chapter considers fictions relating to the Persian and Ottoman empires. It maps the gendered division of the labour of representation through a discussion of two tragic plays by Mary Pix and Delarivier Manley, oriental tales by Antoine Galland and his French and English imitators, and fictional letters in the voice of Turkish and Persian informants by Giovanni Paolo Marana and Charles Montesquieu.

Ancient history · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History