Turkish Delight?: Confecting Entertainment for Ottoman Guests in Eighteenth-Century France

This article focusses on Poulain de Saint-Foix’s one-act comedy Les Veuves Turques, commissioned by an anonymous duchess for the private entertainment of the Ottoman ambassador Mehemed Said Effendi on the occasion of his Paris embassy of 1741-42 and performed in his presence in a private residence by amateur actors on 12 May 1742. The little-known play is read in the historical context of Franco-Ottoman interaction as structured by political diplomacy and private hospitality and is used to reconsider critiques of early eighteenth-century orientalism by showing how Saint-Foix’s confection may have played a small but important role in Franco-Ottoman cultural transfer.