This paper specifically discusses the cultural attitudes that made writing fully realized Muslim characters problematic for Western authors during the 19th and 20th centuries and also how, through their writing, certain authors perpetuated these attitudes. The discussed authors and works include William Beckford's Vathek, Lord Byron's poem “The Giaour,” multiple short stories from the periodica...

The florentine Tommaso Cassai (1401-c.1427) 1 better known as Masaccio, has been hailed as the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance and his fresco Trinity (c.1425, Santa Maria Novella, Florence) as the first work of Western art that used full perspective. It appears that the author was inspired and actually helped by his friend Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), the celebrated architec...