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A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage

This paper seeks to contribute to the postcolonial shifts being undertaken in early modern literary studies, which explore developing racial and colonial identities in this historical period. In particular, this thesis considers the representation and racialisation of the Arab subject on the English...

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Main Author: Moosa, Hassana
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2019
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access_status_str Open Access
author Moosa, Hassana
author_browse Moosa, Hassana
author_facet Moosa, Hassana
author_sort Moosa, Hassana
collection Thesis
description This paper seeks to contribute to the postcolonial shifts being undertaken in early modern literary studies, which explore developing racial and colonial identities in this historical period. In particular, this thesis considers the representation and racialisation of the Arab subject on the English stage at a time when the Ottomans, who, as I argue,form a part of this Arab identity, are superseding England in economic, cultural and intellectual production. Considering overlapping categories of religion, skin-¬‐colour, class, and nationality used to describe Mohammedan-¬‐Ottoman-¬‐Turk-¬‐Moor-¬‐type identities, this paper moves away from readings of suchfiguresas Islamic-¬‐Othersand argues instead for an Arab identity: a racial otherness that categorises this figure,rather than a purely religious one. Considering representations of what I contend to be a racial Arab in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Robert Greene’s The Tragical Reign of Selimus, Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, this paper aims to illustrate how the Arab is racialised through of notions of power and enslavement aligned to early modern versions of this other. To this end, this dissertationhopes to test the anachronisms of the label Arab thus responding to a call made by early modern race scholars Kim Hall and Peter Erikson to bring historical identities of racial otherness into conversation with contemporary counterpart(s).
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:11.035Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2019
publishDateRange 2019
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/29921 A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage Moosa, Hassana This paper seeks to contribute to the postcolonial shifts being undertaken in early modern literary studies, which explore developing racial and colonial identities in this historical period. In particular, this thesis considers the representation and racialisation of the Arab subject on the English stage at a time when the Ottomans, who, as I argue,form a part of this Arab identity, are superseding England in economic, cultural and intellectual production. Considering overlapping categories of religion, skin-¬‐colour, class, and nationality used to describe Mohammedan-¬‐Ottoman-¬‐Turk-¬‐Moor-¬‐type identities, this paper moves away from readings of suchfiguresas Islamic-¬‐Othersand argues instead for an Arab identity: a racial otherness that categorises this figure,rather than a purely religious one. Considering representations of what I contend to be a racial Arab in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Robert Greene’s The Tragical Reign of Selimus, Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, this paper aims to illustrate how the Arab is racialised through of notions of power and enslavement aligned to early modern versions of this other. To this end, this dissertationhopes to test the anachronisms of the label Arab thus responding to a call made by early modern race scholars Kim Hall and Peter Erikson to bring historical identities of racial otherness into conversation with contemporary counterpart(s). 2019-03-14T14:33:43Z 2019-03-14T14:33:43Z 2018 2019-03-14T14:30:19Z Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/29921 eng application/pdf
spellingShingle Moosa, Hassana
A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage
thesis_degree_str Master's
title A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage
title_full A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage
title_fullStr A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage
title_full_unstemmed A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage
title_short A is for Other: Arabs, Race and Enslavement on the Early Modern English Stage
title_sort is for other arabs race and enslavement on the early modern english stage
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/29921
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