Life writing as a slave in Turkish hands: Georgius of Hungary’s reflections about his existence in the Turkish world

摘要

In Georgius of Hungary’s Tractatus (ca. 1480) we learn of a slave’s long-term experience in Turkey, reflected upon after his eventual escape. While Georgius provides extensive details about the culture and religion in the Ottoman Empire, he ultimately utilized his account to overcome the trauma that he had suffered when he was taken prisoner and made into a slave. The term ‘life-writing’ fits the Tractatus well because despite the brevity of the autobiographical references the author outlines to an impressive degree how much his later condemnation of Islam provided him with the necessary narrative framework to reconstitute his own identity as a Christian. Radical rejection thus becomes the epistemological tool for the rebuilding of the own self after slavery.