ABSTRACT
This book explores perceptions of toleration and self-identity through an analysis of otherness’ real experience of Italian travellers, Catholic missionaries and Maltese proto-journalists within Mediterranean border-spaces. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, which integrates the analysis of original and unpublished archival documentation with early modern European travel literature, the book shows how fluid subjects and border groups adapted to new environments, often generating information that made the Ottomans and their system of values real and dignified to an Italian audience. The interdisciplinary combining of historical methodology with the tools of comparative literature, anthropology and folklore studies provides a fresh perspective on concepts of tolerance as experienced in the early modern Mediterranean.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|66 pages
Toleration before tolerance and the endurance of the other
chapter 1|19 pages
Swinging or suspended minds?
chapter 2|18 pages
Venezia, Finestra d’Oriente
part II|64 pages
Imperial pragmatism, minorities’ weakness and hybridization of thought A chance for diversity
chapter 5|19 pages
From weakness to laissez-faire
chapter 6|21 pages
Hybridizing minds Hybridizing minds
part III|69 pages
Playing the role of the besieged fortress, sharing the same inter-Mediterranean codes Another kind of border space