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Montagu’s Letters from the Levant: Contesting the Borders of European Selfhood by Denys Van Renen is a Arts and Humanities article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Contesting the Borders of European Selfhood DENYS VAN RENEN a b s t r a c t As many critics have pointed out, Montagu's gender and class position gave her a certain authority to interrogate Western assumptions about the Levant in her Letters from the Levant (1716-18). Scholars, however, have overlooked her nuanced examination of Ottoman-European relations in part because she addresses European policies through an analysis of how they have permeated Europeans' behavioral traits, attire, and social conventions rather than through a conventional or theoretical analysis of the policies themselves. Just as European countries were gaining territory and expanding their influence across the globe, they were also creating more nation-based divisions within European identity and, to Montagu's disgust, signaling these boundaries more zealously the closer they were to Europe's intercontinental border with Asia. As an aristocratic woman, she is expected to comply with these practices. Because she refuses to do so, Montagu challenges a world order that seeks to carve the world up into European-controlled territories. She understands the cultural demarcations that prescribe certain behaviors b

Who reads Montagu’s Letters from the Levant: Contesting the Borders of European Selfhood?

Author

Denys Van Renen

Publisher

Project MUSE (ISSN 1531-0485)

Published

2011

Language

EN

Field

Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)