Things of Darkness

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.

First sentence: Positioned very early to be interchangeable, tropes of disorder, racial otherness, and unruly sexuality become the terms by which European expansion first appropriates the strange newness of the lands "discovered" in the Renaissance.

Year

1995

Language

English

Publisher

Cornell Univ Pr

Editions

2

Pages

319

ISBN

9780801431173

Data source: Wikidata