Women in the English Drama of the Orient

The subject of this BA thesis are plays set in the Orient, a new genre that started to gain popularity in the Restoration period. These plays, commonly inspired by the popular travelogues to the Orient and historical accounts, are characterised by their collection of stock characters, repeating topoi and orientalised images that represent the Orient more as a conception created by the West than an actual place. Nevertheless, in analysis of some of the plays I shall argue that these works also offer possible commentaries on the British society of the time and that they can be used as arguments criticizing or reinforcing the contemporary perception of women by dealing with such otherwise rather inaccessible themes as women stepping out of their social boundaries, femininity or female sexuality. In order to advocate my thesis I plan to use four different tragedies with Middle-Eastern settings, specifically Rhodes, Morocco, Turkey and Colchis (located mostly in present-day Georgia and Turkey). All these plays were written between 1663 and 1696 and might be considered some of the most representative examples of the genre. They include William Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes (1663), Elkanah Settle's The Empress of Morocco (1673), Mary Pix's Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks (1696) and..