Description
Book SynopsisBisaha provides the most comprehensive and nuanced account now available of the attitudes of Western intellectuals to the Turks, the Byzantines, and crusading in Renaissance Italy, an important time and place for the formation of Western cultural identity.-James Hankins, Harvard University
Trade Review"
Creating East and West is carefully researched and develops a nuanced and subtle argument that portrays the complexity and variability of the West's intellectual response to the Ottoman challenge. It also underscores the importance of this period for the evolution of concepts such as East and West, Europe and Asia, and suggests how these Renaissance views influenced early modern attitudes, and indeed may still inform the modern discourse on Islam and the West." *
Renaissance Quarterly *
"A fruitful, engaging exploration of a formative moment in Western culture, a moment that simultaneously gave rise to the vilified image of "the Turk" and witnessed the self-fashioning of European modernity." *
Bulletin of the Royal Institute For Inter-Faith Studies *
"A beautifully written and fascinating study that evokes an aspect of Renaissance Italian humanist writings long neglected by historians: the humanist responses to the perceived, and often real, threat of the Ottoman Turks (and Islam generally) to Europe in the wake of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453." *
Comitatus *
"Bisaha provides the most comprehensive and nuanced account now available of the attitudes of Western intellectuals to the Turks, the Byzantines, and crusading in Renaissance Italy, an important time and place for the formation of Western cultural identity." * James Hankins, Harvard University *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. Crusade and Charlemagne: Medieval Influences
Chapter 2. The New Barbarian: Redefining the Turks in Classical Terms
Chapter 3. Straddling East and west: Byzantium and Greek Refugees
Chapter 4. Religious Influences and Interpretations
Epilogue: The Renaissance Legacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
