Shades of difference : mythologies of skin color in early modern England / Sujata Iyengar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Iyengar, Sujata.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Race in literature.

Literature and society--England--History--16th century.

Literature and society.

Human skin color--Social aspects.

Human skin color.

Race relations.

History.

England.

Literature and society--England--History--17th century.

England--Race relations--History--16th century.

England--Race relations--History--17th century.

Human skin color--Social aspects--England.

Difference (Psychology) in literature.

Human skin color in literature.

Mythology in literature.

Black people in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 307 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2005]

Summary:

Was there such a thing as a modern notion of race in the English Renaissance, and, if so, was skin color its necessary marker? In fact, early modern texts described human beings of various national origins - including English - as turning white, brown, tawny, black, green, or red for any number of reasons, from the effects of the sun's rays or imbalance of the bodily humors to sexual desire or the application of makeup. It is in this cultural environment that the seventeenth-century London Gazette used the term "black" to describe both dark-skinned African runaways and dark-haired Britons, such as Scots, who are now unquestioningly conceived of as "white."

In Shades of Difference, Sujata Iyengar explores the cultural mythologies of skin color in a period during which colonial expansion and the slave trade introduced Britons to more dark-skinned persons than at any other time in their history. Looking to texts as divergent as sixteenth-century Elizabethan erotic verse, seventeenth-century lyrics, and Restoration prose romances, Iyengar considers the construction of race during the early modern period without oversimplifying the emergence of race as a color-coded classification or a black/white opposition. Rather, "race," embodiment, and skin color are examined in their multiple contexts - historical, geographical, and literary. Iyengar engages works that have not previously been incorporated into discussions of the formation of race, such as Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis." By rethinking the emerging early modern connections between the notions of race, skin color, and gender, Shades of Difference furthers an ongoing discussion with originality and impeccable scholarship.

Contents:

Part I Ethiopian Histories

1 Pictures of Andromeda Naked 19

2 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bride 44

3 Masquing Race 80

Part II Whiteness Visible

4 Heroic Blushing 103

5 Blackface and Blushface 123

6 Whiteness as Sexual Difference 140

Part III Travail Narratives

7 Artificial Negroes 173

8 Suntanned Slaves 200

9 Experiments of Colors 220

Afterword: Nancy Burson's Human Race Machine 241.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [269]-297) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

081223832X

OCLC:

55494866