A positive romantic legend of the Turk coexisted with outright hostility in the West

Evidence

The West also had a romantic or heroic legend of the Turk, which again has diverse origins. Sometimes it was the Western doctrine of the “noble savage”—with the Turk unflatteringly cast in that role. Sometimes the Turk, like other exotic peoples, was used as a vehicle for social comment in the West; sometimes, too, as a means of anti-Christian—or more specifically anti-Catholic controversy, as when sixteenth-century Protestant polemists contrasted Turkish tolerance with Catholic repression. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 633

Categorization

• XREF: Qualifies a one-note Orientalism: representation of the Orient was not uniformly negative — echoes the reader’s frame on representation oscillation within the Said cluster.