The Birth of the Despot : : Venice and the Sublime Porte / / Lucette Valensi.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Valensi, Lucette,
• MitwirkendeR: Denner, Arthur,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (132 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Overture --; PART ONE --; Judith --; Holofernes --; In the Heart of the Seraglio --; The Prophecy of Daniel --; Chorus --; PART TWO --; "Greater tyranny the world has never seen or imagined" --; At the Sublime Porte --; The Abduction fro the Seraglio --; Finale --; Acknowledgments --; Notes --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781501717215; 9783110536157
• DOI: 10.7591/9781501717215
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Lucette Valensi.

In her graceful account of the transformation of European attitudes toward the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lucette Valensi follows the genealogy of the concept of Oriental despotism. The Birth of the Despot examines a crucial moment in the long and ambiguous encounter between the Christian and Islamic worlds: the period after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, when Venice's pursuit of its commercial and maritime interests brought two powerful protagonists—Venice and the Sublime Porte—face-to-face. Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha Triumphans, in which Judith liberates her besieged town by killing the Turk Holofernes, serves as the organizing metaphor in Valensi's study of how Venice's perceptions of its rival changed. Valensi shows how Venice's initial admiration for the sultan and his orderly empire metamorphosed into revulsion at a monstrous tyrant.