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."
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