1st Edition
Roxolana in European Literature, History and Culture
Edited By Galina I. Yermolenko
Copyright 2010
334 Pages
by
Routledge
334 Pages
by
Routledge
334 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This collection is the first book-length scholarly study of the pervasiveness and significance of Roxolana in the European imagination. Roxolana, or "Hurrem Sultan," was a sixteenth-century Ukrainian woman who made an unprecedented career from harem slave and concubine to legal wife and advisor of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Her influence on Ottoman affairs generated... Read more
Introduction; 1: Critical Essays; 1: Roxolana in Europe 1; 2: East versus West: Seraglio Queens, Politics, and Sexuality in Thomas Heywood's Fair Maid of the West, Parts I and II; 3: The Tragedy of Roxolana in the Court of Charles II; 4: Roxolana in German Baroque and Enlightenment Dramas; 5: How a Turkish Empress Became a Champion of Ukraine; 6: Roxolana's Memoirs as a Garden of Intertextual Delight; 7: Roxolana in Turkish Literature: Re-Writing the Ever Elusive Woman of Power and Desire; 2: Translations; 8: Gonzalo de Illescas, The Second Part of the Pontifical and Catholic History (1606) 1; 9: Lope de Vega, The Holy League (1603) 1; 10: Prospero della Rovere Bonarelli, Soliman (1620) 1; 11: Jean Desmares, Roxelana (1643) 1; 12: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Giangir, or the Rejected Throne (1748) 1; 13: Denys Sichynsky, Roksoliana; Historical Opera in Three Acts with a Prologue (1911) 1
Biography
Galina Yermolenko is Associate Professor of English at DeSales University. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Marquette University, and a Ph.D. in Germanic Philology from Simferopol State University, Ukraine.
'The essays, and the translated texts on which they depend, enrich our reading experience of a number of European literary texts that would not have gone beyond a local significance had they only had a bond with the society from which they sprang. It could also be added that Roxolana herself becomes a cosmopolitan character through being rescued, by means of this volume, from her Turkish harem and being connected with major European literature.' Modern Language Review 'Galina Yermolenko's elegant, comprehensive, and well-balanced edited volume takes as its focus Roxolana, one of the most significant figures at the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and traces European and Turkish reactions to their images of her from the 1530s to the present day. ... This book is a strong contribution to European cultural history and will be of use to anyone interested in the shifting attitudes toward powerful women over the last four hundred years.' Russian Review 'Roxolana in European Literature, History and Culture is a valuable contribution not only to our understanding of the ways in which early curiosity in Roxolana manifested itself but also how it changed over time across Europe.' Renaissance Studies
