Authors: Hall
ISBN-13: 9780801482496, ISBN-10: 0801482496
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Date Published: January 1996
Edition: New Edition
The "Ethiope," the "tawny Tartar," the "woman blackamoore," and "knotty Africanisms" - allusions to blackness abound in Renaissance texts. Kim F. Hall's book is the first to view these evocations of blackness in the contexts of sexual politics, imperialism, and slavery in early modern England. Her work reveals the vital link between England's expansion into realms of difference and otherness - through exploration and colonialism - and the highly charged ideas of race and gender which emerged. Concentrating on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Hall shows how race, sexuality, economics, and nationalism contributed to the formation of a modern (white, male) identity in English culture. The volume includes a useful appendix of not readily accessible Renaissance poems on blackness.
List of Illustrations | ||
Acknowledgments | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | A World of Difference: Travel Narratives and the Inscription of Culture | 25 |
2 | Fair Texts/Dark Ladies: Renaissance Lyric and the Poetics of Color | 62 |
3 | "Commerce and Intercourse": Dramas of Alliance and Trade | 123 |
4 | The Daughters of Eve and the Children of Ham: Race and the English Woman Writer | 177 |
5 | "An Object in the Midst of Other Objects": Race, Gender, Material Culture | 211 |
Epilogue: Oil "Race," Black Feminism, and White Supremacy | 254 | |
Appendix: Poems of Blackness | 269 | |
Works Cited | 291 | |
Index | 309 |