Sir Thomas Browne, Paolo Giovio, and the Tragicomedy of Muleasses, King of Tunis

Abstract

This article has two aims: to tell the remarkable story of the Tunisian king Muley al-Hasan, or ‘Muleasses’ (1484–1550), whose cruelty and luxury astounded Europeans of the 1540s, and to trace his depiction in a range of humanist works over the century or so following his death. The latter part focuses especially on the physician and moralist Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), situating a manuscript passage on al-Hasan against Browne’s broader literary strategies and attitudes toward oriental figures. The whole story, finally, is taken as a case study of the relationship between the portrayal of character in humanist scholarship and literature; I argue that our understanding of the latter will be improved by a return to the study of the former with increased critical nuance.