Dolimandro's 'Turkish Knife': Geopolitics and Narrative Style in Mary Wroth's Urania.

This essay analyzes Lady Mary Wroth's *The Countess of Montgomery's Urania* through the lens of early seventeenth-century Anglo-Ottoman relations, arguing that Wroth’s narrative style reflects England’s ambivalent geopolitical and cultural engagement with the Ottoman Empire. It highlights how Wroth employs syntactical and pronominal ambiguities—termed linguistic "severalty"—to mirror the unstable identities and imperial envy characterizing English perceptions of Ottoman power, particularly in episodes featuring Ottoman-coded characters like Antissia and Dolimandro. The essay contrasts Antissia’s disruptive, “infectious” voice, which challenges the narrator’s authority and symbolizes Ottoman threat, with Polarchos, a Christianized Cypriot figure whose narrative collaboration reinforces the narrator’s control and envisions a Christian empire surpassing Ottoman dominance. By connecting Wroth’s formal narrative techniques with contemporary diplomatic, racial, and religious tensions, the essay expands critical understanding of *Urania* beyond global narratology to include its geopolitical and imperial contexts.