Ottomania: The Romantics and the Myth of the Islamic Orient

'Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth'. So Roderick Cavaliero introduces the nineteenth-century European Romantic obsession with the Orient. Cavaliero brings on a rich cast of leading Romantic writers, artists, musicians and travelers, including Beckford, Byron, Shelley, Walter Scott, Pierre Loti, Thomas Moore, Rossini, Eugene Delacroix, Thackeray and Disraeli, who luxuriated in the exotic sights, sounds, literature and mythology of the Orient - the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Cavaliero analyses the Romantic vision of the Orient from Ottoman Turkey, through the Middle East, including Egypt and Persia, to the Vale of Kashmir - fascination with the exotic Orient mixed with distaste for despotic rule. The Romantics saw the Ottoman Empire as the feebler successor to the huge and invincible military state that threatened Europe in previous centuries; and the Ottoman Sultan as an absolute ruler living in distant splendor, with power of life and death over his people, stifling any national and democratic aspiration that might undermine his empire. But dislike of Oriental despotism could be overlaid by the frisson of oriental luxury, especially as the Ottoman Sultans were also heirs to the Caliphate of the iconic Harun ar Rashid in the fabulous 'Arabian Nights Entertainments' - tales hugely popular in Europe and symbolizing timeless Eastern luxury. Dualism was fundamental to Romantic vision - the arch-romantic Byron wrote of 'virgins soft as the roses they twine' in his 'Turkish Tales' but fought for his romantic vision of Greek national independence. Cavaliero's Ottomania will delight all readers interested in tales of the Orient and the literature of the Romantic movement - a rich treasure-house of poets, novelists and travelers.

'Ottomania synthesises an enormous amount of information - historic, literary and artistic - in a seemingly effortless way. There is never a dull moment. The book is a great achievement, the product of a lifetime's reading and research.' - Linda Kelly, author of Ireland's Minstrel and The Young Romantics

Romanticism had its roots in fantasy and fed on myth'. So Roderick Cavaliero introduces the European Romantic obsession with the Orient.Cavaliero draws on a life-time's research in Romantic literature and introduces a rich cast of leading Romantic writers, artists, musicians and travellers, including Beckford, Byron, Shelley, Walter Scott, Pierre Loti, Thomas Moore, Rossini, Eugene Delacroix, Thackeray and Disraeli, and a host of other Romantics, who were drawn to the Orient in the 18th and 19th centuries.They luxuriate in its exotic sights, sounds, literature and, above all, in the prevailing mythology.Cavaliero analyses the Romantic vision where, as Byron writes, there are 'virgins soft as the roses they twine', but lays bare an underlying vision of cruelty and oppression, and of societies based on domestic or prisoner slavery - anathema to the 19th-century Romantic. The overarching myth was that of the Ottoman Empire, a huge and exotic superpower, an empire to rival Rome, a major threat to Europe, with an invincible military record ruled by a Sultan with absolute, even feckless, power of life and death over his subjects who lived to 'delight his senses'.But to the Romantics, fear of the absolute ruler was overlaid by frissons of oriental luxury.
Thus the Ottoman Sultans were the heirs of the iconic Caliphate of Harun ar Rashid in the fabulous Arabian Nights Entertainments.Coleridge's dream of the Orient in Kubla Khan was not of the barbaric grandeur of the global Mongol empire but that of a 'stately pleasure dome in Xanadu' among incense-bearing trees and untroubled forests. Moore's Lalla Rookh was set in his visionary vale of Kashmir and is a love story in 'a land of kingfishers and golden orioles' with the backdrop of the mighty Moghul Empire. Scott was obsessed by the chivalry of the Crusades on both sides and Disraeli was fascinated by the interplay of the Abrahamic faiths and the hopes of peace in the Holy Land. Dualism runs through Romantic writing even when European realpolitik and modern nationalism are involved - as in the Greek revolt against Ottoman rule and the decline of Turkey as a great power. But above all for the Romantics the Orient remained mysterious and inviting. Cavaliero's Ottomania will delight all readers interested in tales of the exotic Orient, and the literature of the Romantic movement - a rich treasure-house of poets, novelist

Roderick Cavaliero is a writer and historian. He is the author of Admiral Satan: The Life and Campaigns of the Bailli de Suffren, Independence of Brazil and Strangers in the Land: The Rise and Decline of the British Indian Empire (all I.B.Tauris) as well as Last of the Crusaders: The Knights of St John, Malta in the Eighteenth Century and 'Italia Romantica: English Romantics and Italian Freedom (Tauris Parke Paperbacks).

Introduction * The Empire of Osman * The Sultan in his Seraglio * The Harem * Exotic and Erotic * Peri and Prisoner * Look upon my works ye mighty and despair * Virgins soft as roses * Ghastly as a tyrant's dream * Barbering and shaving * Lallah Rookh and the Irish Minstrel * Scott and the quest for chivalry * Tancred and Eva * Isabella, Hester and Jane * Conclusion * Biblography