Romantic poetry’s Turk figure is defined by rape and infanticide of Christians.

Evidence

Most of the great Romantic poets were strongly influenced by Orientalism. Shelley described the Turks as a race that would “reign in hell.” His poem Hellas describes the rape of virgins and impaling of soldiers by Turkish soldiers, “Go! Bid them pay themselves / With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins / Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy? / No infidel children to impale on spears?” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 391

Categorization

• SHARE: Shelley’s Hellas as an anti-Turk polemic is a specific, vivid citation worth sharing with anyone working on Romantic-era Orientalism or philhellenism.