Imagined Lepanto: Turks, mapbooks, intrigue, and spectacular in the sixteenth century construction of 1571

The ways in which the battle of Lepanto was imagined by contemporaries proves to be a combination and confluence of international and domestic political pressures, celebratory ritual, print practices, and the currency of intellectual ideas. The understanding of the Turkish adversary as constructed in the pamphlet literature and sixteenth century Turcica; the geographical imagining of the Mediterranean frontier; the Renaissance interest in ancient galley battles; the political implications of victory spectaculars and the attendant celebration of battle figures like Don Juan of Austria provide angles from which to approach a contemporary understanding of the battle which transpired on October 7, 1571.