Lady M. W. montagus religious fiction in the Turkish embassy letters : how "doctrines of islam" are misrepresented

Abstract EN

Working within the acceptable limits and traditions of the eighteenth-century oriental discourse and readership, Lady Mary Worley Montagu weaves her Turkish Embassy Letters to picture Islam as Muhammad's, and Turkish Women's Islamic beliefs as superstitions.

Viewing the East through her own British socio-political and religious prejudices, she copies Recut in representing Islam.

She selects and reports some un-Islamic practices to impress her readers.

A close reading of the Letters and the Islamic cannon proves Lady Montagu's conclusions to be fictitious.

The reason behind all these misrepresentations of Islam and the East is Montagu's refusal to recognize Islam as a religion.

The few times she tries to overcome her inner resistance of the "other" she appears to be embarrassed and the best she can come up with is to resort to her Christian values as a basis for judgment.

Finally, she repeatedly invokes Christianity as the sole "genuine" religion whenever she mentions Islam.

Such one-sided representation of the "other" in these Letters has become a dangerous literary phenomenon that urgently demands further research.