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The Turkish Spy: A Peripatetic Novel, Alain M. Antoine

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

Beginning its published life in a short Italian version featuring 30 letters in 1684, Letters Writ by a Turkish Spygrew into 102 letters in a French version published in 1686, and between 1687 and 1694 turned into a monumental eight volumes English Edition featuring 632 letters. The hero of the novel, a Muslim Arab spying on Louis XIV’s France for the Ottoman sultan undergoes a transformation by his contact with the Christian world, and his reflections on man, society and God seized the imagination of the public. The novel’s popularity helped its rapid spread over European nations in the …