Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire in Romantic and Victorian Culture

The Sultan's City, 1800-1876

Piya Pal-Lapinski

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781350398658
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Piya Pal-Lapinski explores the transformation of the Ottoman empire (and its Byzantine ghosts) during the period 1800-1876 in terms of its crucial impact on British and European transnational identities.
From Romantic Byzantium to operatic sultans and vampiric janissaries, the arc of this book takes on a fascinating but often overlooked area of 19th century literary studies – the encounter with Constantinople/Istanbul, "the diamond between two sapphires" on the Bosphorus and the effect of the city's complicated history on Romantic /Victorian writers and artists. Drawing on unpublished, archival material on Thomas Hope and Julia Pardoe, she provides fresh readings of these writers as well as Byron, Disraeli, Scott and Mary Shelley, among others. Taking up the problems posed by the existence of a global, cosmopolitan empire with its center in Istanbul and control over borderlands known as "Turkey- in -Europe, " the book examines these issues against the background of the rise of nationalist movements and ethnic affiliations in the 19th century. Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire in Romantic and Victorian Culture proposes a new approach to understanding the final century of a significant non-Western, Islamic empire.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Brief timeline of important historical events 1718–1878
• Introduction
• 1 The Stones of Constantinople: Walter Scott, The Last Man, and the Fossati Restoration of the Hagia Sophia
• 2 Byron Pasha in Istanbul with Shelley, Mozart, and Rossini: The Seductions of Ottoman Sovereignty
• 3 Champagne and Conversion: Thomas Hope’s Libertine on the Golden Horn
• 4 Janissaries, Devşirme, Vampirism: The Haunted Balkans and Lands of Rum
• 5 “Lend me a Pen of Fire”: Julia Pardoe’s City on the Bosphorus
• 6 Victorian Ottomania: Disraeli and Tancred
• 7 “The Sultan’s New Palace on the Bosphorus”: Imagining Dolmabahçe and Beyond
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint