Race and rhetoric in the Renaissance : barbarian errors / Ian Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Ian, 1957 June 9-

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Early modern cultural studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Race in literature.

Black people in literature.

Africans in literature.

Renaissance--England.

Renaissance.

Rhetoric.

History.

England.

Rhetoric--England--History--16th century.

Rhetoric--England--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

231 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Summary:

During the English Renaissance, the figure of the classical barbarian-identified by ineloquent speech that marked him as a cultural outsider-was recovered for stereotyping Africans. This book advances the idea that language and not only color or religion, functioned as an important racial code. This study also reveals the way in which England's strategic projection of a "barbarous" language was meant to enhance its own image at the expense of the early modern African. Ian Smith makes use of the sixteenth-century preoccupation with language rehabilitation to tell the larger story of an anxious nation redirecting attention away from its own marginal, minority status by racial scapegoating.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Classical Precedents 23

Chapter 2 Race in Perspective 45

Chapter 3 Barbarian Genealogies 73

Chapter 4 Instructing die English Nation 97

Chapter 5 Shakespeare's Africans: Performing Race in Early Modern England 123.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230620452

0230620450

OCLC:

316829447