"Boys Abducted investigates the relationship between homoeroticism, race, and empire before modernity. The book concerns racially, religiously, culturally exoticized boys who were forcibly taken from their native lands and made into objects of servitude and desire. Looking to the abducted boy as a literary and historical figure, Abdulhamit Arvas explores the complex homoerotic subtexts of racial and religious difference and imperial violence in both the emergent empire of England and the Ottoman empire. Arvas argues that boys who were abducted, exchanged, and circulated are both indicative of and caught up in larger cultural, economic, and political practices that contribute to and sustain the homoerotics of imperialism"-- Provided by publisher.
In Boys Abducted, Abdulhamit Arvas explores the history of abducted boys in English and Ottoman literary and visual culture to examine the relationships between homoeroticism, race, and empire in the early modern period. The popular literary trope of the abducted beautiful boyoften eroticized as an exotic object of desireintersects with the historical phenomenon of vulnerable youths who were captured and exchanged within the global traffic in bodies. Arvas offers a queer-historicist analysis of a wide array of Ottoman and English texts and genres ranging from poetry, drama, and travelogue to chronicles, maps, and visual arts. He shows how the boy in these representations crosses boundaries between nations and empires, embodying the tensions and dissonances between the aestheticized eroticism of literary and cultural representations and the violent history of abductions, conversions, and enslavements. In so doing, Arvas presents complex parallels and connections between the two societies, highlighting the circulation of sexual and racial discourses in imperial imaginings to uncover discursive formations and formulations of sexuality, race, and empire.
Abdulhamit Arvas explores the history of abducted boys in English and Ottoman literary and visual culture to examine the relationships between homoeroticism, race, and empire in the early modern period.
In Boys Abducted, Abdulhamit Arvas explores the history of abducted boys in English and Ottoman literary and visual culture to examine the relationships between homoeroticism, race, and empire in the early modern period. The popular literary trope of the abducted beautiful boyoften eroticized as an exotic object of desireintersects with the historical phenomenon of vulnerable youths who were captured and exchanged within the global traffic in bodies. Arvas offers a queer-historicist analysis of a wide array of Ottoman and English texts and genres ranging from poetry, drama, and travelogue to chronicles, maps, and visual arts. He shows how the boy in these representations crosses boundaries between nations and empires, embodying the tensions and dissonances between the aestheticized eroticism of literary and cultural representations and the violent history of abductions, conversions, and enslavements. In so doing, Arvas presents complex parallels and connections between the two societies, highlighting the circulation of sexual and racial discourses in imperial imaginings to uncover discursive formations and formulations of sexuality, race, and empire.
