Knolles' The Generall Historie of the Turkes in Early Modern English Literature

Richard Knolles’ The Generall Historie of the Turkes is one of the earliest and most comprehensive histories written about the Ottoman Empire in English. The book has been used as a historical reference book by many scholars and inspired many English literary works that dealt with the Turks or the Ottoman history. In this paper I discuss the significance of this work with respect to the generation of the English outlook on the Ottoman Empire in a period when the commercial and diplomatic ties between the two countries were first initiated. At the same time by referring to certain English dramatic works which used Knolles’ narrative as a source for their plots and characters, I want to underline the book’s role in the construction of the image of the Turk in the public imagination of early modern England.