Bibliographie complète

This thesis studies the European travel literature concerning the Ottoman Empire and tries to analyse the role of the informers used by the Europeans in the creation of their representation of the janissaries within their travel accounts. Once the janissaries and the travel literature are presented in the first chapter, the second initiates a reflexion about the form taken by the representation of the janissaries. This representation is twofold : one is « individual », and the other is « collective ». In the first, the focus is put on understanding the representation of the many individuals composing this corps while in the second, the janissaries are seen as a collective entity. Once these parameters are set, the final chapter explore the mechanisms surrounding how travellers assemble their information to understand the janissaries by using three main groups of native informants. Following this analysis, we arrived at the conclusion that the informers either complexify, simplify or alter the perspectives of the travellers. It depends on the linguistic skills of each traveller, because it is the main factor that determines the identity of the people used by them to collect their information, and by extension, the extent to which those travellers exposed themselves to the filters created by linguistic intermediaries and translators. This conclusion enriches our understanding of the process which created the representations transmitted by travel literature, and also offers interesting leads for future analysis on travel accounts. Since considering the influence of the informers used by travellers in the description and explanation of subjects related to a scholar’s interests might be beneficial to his own understanding of his researchs.