This book explores the threat of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early modern English plays. In works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger, and others, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both tragic and erotic, as a fate worse than death and as a sexual seduction.

Introduction: "Turning Turk" and the Embodiment of Christian Faith and Resistance; 1. Dangerous Fellowship: Universal Spirituality and its Bodily Limits in The Comedy of Errors and Othello; 2. Recycled Models: Catholic Martyrdom and Embodied Resistance to "Turning Turk"; 3. Engendering Faith: Sexual Defilement and Spiritual Redemption in The Renegado; 4. Reforming the Knights of Malta: Male Chastity and Temperance on the Early Modern Stage; Coda: Turning Miscegenation into Tragicomedy (Or Not): Greene's Orlando Furioso.

Incisively arguing that conversion to Islam brought to a crisis English ambivalence about the Protestant emphasis on disembodiment and immateriality in religious life, this book brilliantly explores how "turning Turk" was simultaneously understood in religious, sexual, and proto-racial terms in the early modern period. Elegantly written and vividly illustrated, Degenhardt's book links early modern and medieval conversion narratives with canonical and less canonical plays to provide a strikingly original account of why Islamic conversion was so important to early modern thought and why the stage was such a rich site for its exploration. -- Jean E. Howard, George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University This is a strong, exciting, and original book. Degenhardt draws deeply on contemporary sermons, ecclesiastical debates, news pamphlets, and travel literature alongside a wide range of plays in order to give a complex and lively picture of the cultures of controversy in Renaissance England. -- Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English, The University of California, Irvine Incisively arguing that conversion to Islam brought to a crisis English ambivalence about the Protestant emphasis on disembodiment and immateriality in religious life, this book brilliantly explores how "turning Turk" was simultaneously understood in religious, sexual, and proto-racial terms in the early modern period. Elegantly written and vividly illustrated, Degenhardt's book links early modern and medieval conversion narratives with canonical and less canonical plays to provide a strikingly original account of why Islamic conversion was so important to early modern thought and why the stage was such a rich site for its exploration. This is a strong, exciting, and original book. Degenhardt draws deeply on contemporary sermons, ecclesiastical debates, news pamphlets, and travel literature alongside a wide range of plays in order to give a complex and lively picture of the cultures of controversy in Renaissance England.