Uniting twelve original studies by scholars of early modern history, literature, and the arts, this collection is the first that foregrounds the dialectical quality of early modern Orientalism by taking a broad interdisciplinary perspective. Dialectics of Orientalism demonstrates how texts and images of the sixteenth and seventeenth century from across Europe and the New World are better understood as part of a dynamic and transformative orientalist discourse rather than a manifestation of the supposed dichotomy between the 'East' and the 'West.' The volume's central claim is that early modern orientalist discourses are fundamentally open, self-critical, and creative. Analyzing a varied corpus-from German and Dutch travelogues to Spanish humanist treaties, French essays, Flemish paintings, and English diaries-this collection thus breathes fresh air into the critique of Orientalism and provides productive new perspectives for the study of east-west and indeed globalized exchangesin the early modern world.

Introduction.- Part I. ORIENTALIST EPISTEMOLOGIES.- "A Captive Library between Morocco and Spain" (Oumelbanine Zhiri).- "Political Pragmatism, Humanist Ideals, and Early Modern Orientalism in Busbecq's Turkish Letters" (Kaya Sahin).- "Competing Forms of Knowledge in Adam Olearius's Orientalische Reise (1647)" (Aigi Heero and Maris Saagpakk).- Part II. EMPIRE AND ITS ORIENTS.- "The Discourse on the Chinese and Muslim Worlds in the Hispanic Empire (New Spain and Castile, 1550-1650)" (José L. Gasch-Tomás and Natalia Maillard Álvarez).- "Mapping Islam in the Philippines: Moro Anxieties of the Spanish Empire in the Pacific" (Ana María Rodríguez-Rodríguez).- "The Invention of Europe and the Intellectual Struggle for Political Imagination: Spanish Humanism on the Ottomans" (Natalio Ohanna).- Part III. ORIENTALISM AND THE IDEA OF EUROPE.- "Europe, France, and the Ottoman Empire in the Essais: Montaigne's Dialectics" (Marcus Keller).- "Mehmed II and His Woman: The Idea of Europe in Early Modern Representations of a Female Captive" (David Moberly).- "Was There a Pan-European Orientalism? Icelandic and Flemish Perspectives on Captivity in Muslim North Africa (1628-1656)" (Toby Wikström).- Part IV. VISUAL DIALECTICS.- "Christian of Ottoman Europe in Sixteenth-Century Costume Books" (Robyn D. Radway).- "Amazon Battle and the Seventeenth-Century Antwerp Painting Canon" (Lisa Rosenthal).- "The Architectural Setting of 'Empire': the English Experience of Ottoman Spectacle in the Late Seventeenth Century and Its Consequences" (Lydia M. Soo)