As we move towards a consideration of how certain motifs entered popular culture in western Europe, we need to start taking note of repeating anecdotes and descriptions. These anecdotes might be repeated in multiple accounts because they reflected factual observations. But they might instead represent the recycling of material by authors who wanted to add more colorful specifics to their own accounts.
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Given Thomas Glover's background (born and raised in Constantinople) and his multi-lingual competence, we might expect him to have a much more thorough familiarity with Ottoman Society than some of the other authors in this series. But his accounts are more terse, high-level summaries than some of the others. Perhaps, being a "local" he didn't have the same fascination and curiosity that led some of the other authors to write more extensively.
In my opinion, Ottaviano Bon represents the last of the male-authored accounts that appear to be solidly "original" as opposed to potentially recycling the material of previous authors. He also introduces the second motif that gets repeated by other authors: the cucumber anecdote. But overall, his descriptions are vague and ambiguous with regard to whether he's describing lesbian relations among Ottoman women, as opposed to unauthorized self-stimulation.
The second item in my "Europeans talk about lesbianism in the Ottoman Empire" series introduces a topic that I'll come back to repeatedly and discuss in the upcoming podcast. For all that we have this variety of 16-17th century "travelers' tales" that make some reference to lesbian desire in women's spaces in Ottoman society, we should be skeptical about the independence of these reports.
I've had a project on my to-do list to put together a podcast on Early Modern European perceptions of lesbianism in the Ottoman Empire. And as preparation, I wanted to do a deep dive into the source material on this topic. So this is the first in a series of primary source posts to that end. (I'll try to get all the source material posted before the podcast goes up.) One of the curious aspects of this topic is to see how much of the "travelers' tales" genre turns out to be recycled material from previous publications.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 272 - On the Shelf for November 2023 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2023/11/04 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for November 2023.
While this article is interesting in its own right, it wasn't the article on this topic I hoped to find. And I'm not entirely certain that "female rake" is the most appropriate way to categorize Con Phillips. She certainly appears to have had libertine leanings, and stands outside the ideals of English womanhood of the day. But I envision the role of "rake" as involving a bit less financial dependence on one's amours.
[Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 271 – The Salt Price by B. Pladek - transcript
(Originally aired 2023/10/28 - listen here)
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 270 - Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 10: Rakes - transcript
(Originally aired 2023/10/21 - listen here)
Maybe I'm just not in the right headspace for this article. Maybe it simply isn't operating on my wavelength. But I found it incoherent and boring (and of only tenuous connection to either "literature" or "gay and lesbian"). Sorry about that.
I'll wrap up this book with another post that simply lists the chapters that I didn't cover due to falling entirely within the 20th century. Then on to something more interesting!
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