Race / Brian Niro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Niro, Brian, 1972-

Series:

Transitions (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))

Transitions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Race in literature.

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Physical Description:

ix, 198 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Summary:

This dynamic study of the history of the idea of race provides a broad historical overview of the concept from its inception to the present. Brian Niro introduces key theorists and philosophers and a wide variety of literary and theoretical concepts. A series of close readings of often studied literary texts, including "Robinson Crusoe," "Frankenstein" and "Heart of Darkness," help to make the theories discussed accessible.

Contents:

1 False Origins: The Greeks, Methodology, Etymology, and Shakespeare 13

Theory, practice, and origins 13

The Greeks: Plato and Aristotle 19

Methodology and travel writing 32

Etymology and Shakespeare 41

2 The Enlightenment and the Fabrication of Race 54

The Enlightenment fabrication of race 54

Defoe and racial malleability 76

Frankenstein's imperial paranoia 82

3 Scientific Authority and Appropriation 92

Charles Darwin 92

Counternarratives, degeneration, and eugenics 102

Kipling's duality and degenerative subversion 117

4 Modernity, Orientalism, Negritude, and the Phenomenology of Race 127

Modernism as movement toward the postcolonial 127

Orientalism 132

Negritude 139

Encounters with racism: Achebe, Conrad, and Kane 147

5 America 157

Placing race: the one-drop rule 157

The Harlem Renaissance: black art and the disappearing trope of race 167

Cane and Passing 173

The impossibility of an American race 178.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 192-197) and index.

ISBN:

0333753127

0333753135

OCLC:

51668322