The Lustful Turk
The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem is a pre-Victorian British erotic novel first published anonymously in 1828 by John Benjamin Brookes and reprinted by William Dugdale. However, it was not widely known or circulated until the 1893 edition.
The novel consists largely of a series of letters written by its heroine, Emily Barlow, to her friend, Sylvia Carey. When Emily sails from England for India in June 1814 her ship is attacked by Moorish pirates and she is taken to the harem of Ali, The Dey of Algiers[Note 1]. The Dey rapes her and subjects her to his will, awakening her sexual passions. Emily's debasement continues when Ghe Dey insists on anal sex, arousing the horror of her correspondent Sylvia, who expresses her indignation at The Dey's behavior, in a letter that the latter intercepts. Annoyed at her attitude, The Dey arranges for Sylvia to be abducted and brought to the slave market of Algiers. After an elaborate charade in which The Dey pretends to be a sympathetic Frenchman, bidding to save her from sexual slavery, and engaging her in a fake marriage, he deflowers her and awakens her sexuality, as he had done with Emily. Revealing his true identity The Dey enjoys both girls together. This sexual idyll is eventually terminated when a new addition to the harem objects to anal rape and cuts off The Dey's penis with a knife, and then commits suicide. Seemingly unfazed by this, The Dey has "his lost members preserved in spirits of wine in glass vases" which he presents to Emily and Sylvia, sending them back to England with these tokens of his affection.
The novel also incorporates interpolated stories concerning the erotic misadventures of three other girls abducted into the harem and enlarges on the fate of Emily's maid Eliza who, presented by The Dey to Muzra, Bey of Tunis, is bound, flogged, and raped in turn.
The book was one of those condemned as obscene by Lord Chief Justice Campbell when Dugdale was prosecuted in 1857.
The Lustful Turk uses the contemporary conventions of the Novel of sensibility and Gothic romance and its exotic Oriental themes are influenced by the life, adventures, and writings of Lord Byron. It was influential on many other works of erotica, and the theme of the virgin who is forcibly introduced to sexual acts and later becomes insatiable in her appetite for the carnal is common in later erotica. Such works include The Way of a Man with a Maid, a classic work of Victorian erotica concerning the forcible seduction of a girl called Alice by a Victorian gentleman; May's Account of Her Introduction to the Art of Love, first published in the Victorian erotic periodical The Pearl and The Sheik written by Edith Maude Hull, published in 1921.
A film adaptation of The Lustful Turk was produced in 1968 by David Friedman.
In the mystery novel Die For Love by Barbara Mertz (under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters), plagiarism of The Lustful Turk is a minor plot point.
References
- Source: !Sm-201 2017-0316 backup
Notes
- ↑ Definition of Dey - a ruling official of the Ottoman Empire in northern Africa
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