Muslim-Christian Encounters on the London Stage, 1672-1823

Short Introduction

The current study focused on examining the images of the Muslim/Moors in the English theater from the seventeenth century throughout the nineteenth century. It limned that fear of Islam haunted the English playwrights’ minds (and the Westerners’ in general); as a result, their writings were characterized with radicalized subjectivity. Indeed, notorious images of the alien Muslims, backward others, which pictured them as “cruel”, “barbaric”, uncivilized and a “threat for Christianity” run across the works of four English playwrights, John Dryden (1672) Almanzor and Almahide: Or, the Conquest of Granada, Sophia Lee (1797) Almeyda, Queen of Granada, Samuel Coleridge (1797) Remorse and Felicia Hemans (1823) TheSiege of Valencia, which are the case study of this study. Such works, nevertheless, depicted holy images of the Christians, as believers and civilized human beings. Arguing against Said’s main thesis in Orientalism, which stressed the static and homogeneous representation of the Muslims and neglected their resistance, the present study shows that the English playwrights’ writings were heterogeneous, depicting the Muslim other with varying degree of negativity and subjectivity. It highlights also that the Muslim personas were able to edit out the negative stereotypes and misconceptions which were thrown over them and appear as a more purified nature and nurture than their Christian counterparts. They even took the lead and exposed the