Entering the body : reading early modern literature through Islamic theology -

Abstract

This thesis reconsiders the dominant discourse that not only imposes an Orientalism onto the early modern period but solely regards the monolithic divorce between East and West. This thesis reads early modern English literature without “project[ing] a dichotomy between a superior Christian Occident and an inferior Islamic Orient onto the early modern period” (Garcia 4). I read the early modern period’s literature through a Muslim theological lens as I strive to reconsider the East-West division by taking into account Abrahamic religious connections joining the religions of Islam and Christianity. An approach that highlights the already existing “connected history” lying between the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam is adopted in order to cease treating “Islam as a ‘religion’ distinct from Judaism and Christianity” (Garcia 12-13). This thesis undoes the marginalization Islamic theology has witnessed in scholarly works on the early modern period. I look at the dissection of the flesh in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great and Shakespeare’s Othello and Antony and Cleopatra through a Muslim theological lens. The use of Muslim theology, Quran and Hadith, in reading the dissection of the body in early modern literature reveals that characters provide knowledge, attain revelations and acquire resolutions to their problems through the opening of their flesh.