The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem is a pre-Victorian British exploitationeroticepistolary novel first published anonymously in 1828 by John Benjamin Brookes and reprinted byWilliam 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 byMoorish pirates and she is taken to theharem of Ali,dey ofAlgiers. Alirapes her and subjects her to his will, awakening her sexual passions. Emily's debasement continues when Ali insists onanal sex, arousing the horror of her correspondent Sylvia, who expresses her indignation at Ali's behaviour, in a letter that the latter intercepts. Annoyed at her attitude, Ali arranges for Sylvia to be abducted and brought to the slave market of Algiers. After an elaborate charade in which Ali 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 Ali enjoys both girls together. This sexual idyll is eventually terminated when an addition to the harem objects to anal rape,cuts off Ali's penis with a knife, and then commitssuicide.[1] Seemingly unfazed by this, Ali 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.[2]
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 Ali to Muzra,bey of Tunis, is bound, flogged and raped in turn.[3]
The book was one of those condemned as obscene byLord Chief Justice Campbell when Dugdale was prosecuted in 1857.[4]
The Lustful Turk uses the contemporary conventions of thenovel of sensibility andGothic romance and its exotic Oriental themes are influenced by the life, adventures and writings ofLord Byron.[5] 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.[6] Such works includeThe Way of a Man with a Maid, a classic work ofVictorian 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 periodicalThe Pearl, and the novelThe Sheik written byEdith Maude Hull, published in 1921.[7]
A film adaptation ofThe Lustful Turk was directed in 1968 by Byron Mabe with the screenplay written byDavid Friedman and starring Abbe Rentz, Linda Stiles and Gee Gentell.[8][9]
Ingrid Steeger played Eliza in theErwin C. Dietrich productionThe Lustful Turk [de] (1971).
In the mystery novelDie for Love byBarbara Mertz (under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters), plagiarism ofThe Lustful Turk is a minor plot point.[10]
WhereasSteven Marcus employedThe Lustful Turk in his construction of the placeless realm ofpornotopia in Victorian erotica, later writers have stressed the importance of theorientalist setting in generating a further sexualised charge[11]—the harem as a sort of erotic finishing-school.[12]
The full text ofThe Lustful Turk at Wikisource
