Corsairs, Captives, Converts is a broad study of the transnational early modern phenomenon of the Barbary captivity narrative: autobiographical reports by former captives in the North African Maghreb, who had become victims of the so-called Barbary corsairs. These pirates, based in Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, roamed the Mediterranean from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, taking trade goods and, in particular, crew members for enslavement and the extortion of ransom. Within this timespan, the Barbary captivity narrative spread across Europe and America. This text type illustrates and reflects the gradual transformation of reported fact into narrative fiction in the context of the birth of the novel. Corsairs, Captives, Converts is the first full-fledged study of important German Barbary narratives from a cross-national perspective.weiterlesen