Correcting Europe's error: Venetian cosmopolites on Turkish 'literature'
[Thesis]
Terrance J. Mintner
Wandel, Lee P.; Mazzaoui, Maureen F.
The University of Wisconsin - Madison
2017
260
Committee members: Broman, Thomas H.; Chamberlain, Michael; Chamedes, Giuliana; Desan, Suzanne M.
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-50569-6
Ph.D.
History
The University of Wisconsin - Madison
2017
After serving four years as Venice's head ambassador to the Ottoman Turks, Giovanni Battista Donà published a brief treatise titled Della Letteratura de' Turchi (1688). Under the rubric of "literature," it guided the reader through the largely unknown terrain of Turkish learning, documenting the nation's advances in the arts, letters, and sciences. The treatise - the first known of its kind - spawned a revisionist thread as more writers took up Donà's core aim: overturning the entrenched "error" among many Europeans who continued to believe the Turks were immersed in ignorance. Roughly one-hundred years later, another Venetian by the name of Giambattista Toderini wrote a longer treatise with a slightly altered title, Letteratura turchesca (1787).
European history
Social sciences;Cosmopolitanism;Diplomacy;Literature;Republic of letters;Turks;Venice