Synopses & Reviews
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 Englands 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.
Review
“In this lively, wide-ranging, and sometimes controversial study, Smith achieves the signal feat of breathing new life into the extended debate about the understanding of ‘race in Shakespeares England. His book is particularly illuminating in its account of how the Renaissance absorbed and adapted classical ideas of otherness, and in its exploration of the part played by language and the rhetorical tradition in early modern constructions of savagery and barbarism.”—Michael Neill, Emeritus Professor, University of Auckland and editor of The Oxford Shakespeare Othello
“Smith's Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance represents an important departure from the emphasis on visual representation in recent studies of race in early modern England. Instead, Smith's focus is on language as the key to racial difference, and that language, literary and otherwise, is at once undergoing remarkable change and invariably indebted to the classical past. Smith compels his readers to recognize that race is not merely a fashionable topic but a key component in Renaissance humanist thought. This bold and innovative study will be essential reading for graduate students and faculty in the field.”--Dympna Callaghan, Dean's Professor in the Humanities, Syracuse University and author of Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage
Synopsis
This book brings together key, incisive writings (published and unpublished) of the late Andre Gunder Frank on world development and world history in a singular volume. The selections provide the reader with a historical tracing of Gunder Frank's conceptual thinking on development from the national liberation struggles of the 1950s -1960s through to his views on world history, world development and globalization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The latter period witnessed his rethinking of world development and the rejection of theoretical positions he had taken in the 1960s and 1970s. Pertinent writings during the last phase of his intellectual career addressing the impact of Eurocentrism on the understanding of world development and world history, the mythology of European exceptionalism, and the rise of Asia are included.
Synopsis
This book argues that the sixteenth-century preoccupation with rehabilitating English tells the larger story of an anxious nation redirecting attention away from its own marginal, minority status by racially scapegoating the 'barbarous' African.
About the Author
Ian Smith is an Associate Professor of English at Lafayette College and has published on early modern drama and postcolonial literature. He is currently preparing a book on early modern English blackface theater.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Barbarous African, Barbarous English, and the Transactions of Race * Classical Precedents * Race in Perspective * Barbarian Genealogies * Instructing the English Nation * Shakespeares Africans: Performing Cultural Whiteness * Epilogue: Imperialisms Legacy, or the “Language of the Criminal”