Oriental Matter Revisited: Representations of the “Turk” in Robert Greene’s Selimus

From the definitions provided by Edward Said in his Orientalism, it is possible to divide western oriental discourse into two different phases: one covering the early modern period up to eighteenth century which demonizes and misrepresents the East, and the other, arguably still in effect, which, in Said’s words, dominates and restructures it. The representations of the Turks in the early modern plays assume a tone which is different from the representations of the other eastern races. The Turks, unlike other “inferior” oriental races, are represented in the early modern writings as the “grand evil” whose infidelity and apparent power are such a great threat to the Christian world that they must be stopped and destroyed. Through analyses of AngloTurkish encounters in the early modern period, this paper aims to examine and explore the meanings encoded in the (mis)representations of the Turks in Robert Greene’s play, Selimus. It will also be argued that the preeighteenth century English approach to the Ottoman Turks can be defined as a process of demonization and misrepresentation rather than domination and restructuring.