We have lots of various captivity narratives in our collection. They are usually sensationalized stories set in New England--stories of terror designed to frighten and titillate. There is almost always a racially charged dichotomy set up between the "savage" and the "civilized" reflecting the pervading fears of the white settlers. We just acquired a new one that is both very different and still frighteningly similar. In this second edition of Bartolomej Georgijević's
De afflictione tam captivorum quam etiam sub Turcae tributo viuentium Christianorum (Worms: excudebat Gregorius Comiander, 1545), the captive is a Croatian captured and enslaved by the Ottoman Empire. The same tropes appear: a good Christian is captured by a threatening non-Christian other and forced into servitude.
Interestingly, Georgijević was also a talented linguist and the slender volume contains a basic Latin to Turkish lexicon and a short Croatian-Latin dictionary. The book took off, as so many captivity narratives did, and served as a highly biased account of Turkish culture at a time when Europe was both fascinated and terrified of that which lurked just to the East.
To take a look (it has seven wonderful woodcuts), ask for
Rare DR481 .G46 1545.
