Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and theTurkish Embassy Letters: A Survey of Contemporary Criticism

Abstract

Since the publication of Robert Halsband's biography of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1956 and his later edited collection of her letters, modern scholars have been fascinated with the network of critical discourses in Montagu's writing in the Turkish Embassy Letters. Analyzing her work on multiple axes – religious, political, scientific, and gendered – contemporary critics have made this classic text accessible to new generations of readers and thinkers. Yet as scholarship on these letters continues to flourish, certain trends persist, often at the expense of new avenues of inquiry. This article proposes that several recent threads in the scholarly conversation surrounding the Turkish Embassy Letters have the potential to be expanded in three promising new directions to more fully explore Montagu's religious identity and its relationship to her discussions of religious belief and practice; her unique role as a mother while traveling; and her place in the smallpox variolation controversy and its relationship to disability.

Trans-Adriatic Enlightenments: Maria Petrettini’s Italian Translation of the Turkish Embassy Letters

“…Contemporary examination of the Turkish Embassy Letters situates them within the discourses of post-colonial studies and it has spurred a lively debate on whether they offer an orientalist gaze or not (Campbell 1994;Aravamudan 1995;Secor 1999;Weitzman 2002;Dadhaboy 2016;Hall et al 2017). Whichever stance one might take in this debate, Montagu's positionality is clearly that of a British woman who mirrors herself upon the "other" in order to structure her own image.…”