English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:22nd Jun '06
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£90.00(9780521810562)
This 2003 volume outlines 'scientific' conceptions of racial and ethnic differences in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writing.
This 2003 volume outlines what we might call 'scientific' conceptions of racial and ethnic differences in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writing. Drawing on classical and contemporary medical texts, histories and cosmographies, Floyd-Wilson demonstrates that Renaissance understandings of racial and ethnic identities contradicted many modern stereotypes concerning difference.In English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama, first published in 2003, Mary Floyd-Wilson outlines what we might call 'scientific' conceptions of racial and ethnic differences in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writing. Drawing on classical and contemporary medical texts, histories and cosmographies, Floyd-Wilson demonstrates that Renaissance understandings of racial and ethnic identities contradicted many modern stereotypes concerning difference. Southerners, Africans, in particular, were identified as dispassionate, cool-tempered and wise, whereas the more northern English were understood to be unruly, impressionable and slow-witted. Concerned with the unflattering and constraining implications of this classically derived knowledge, English writers laboured to reinvent ethnology to their own advantage - a labour that paved the way for the invention of more familiar racial ideas. Floyd-Wilson highlights these English revisionary efforts in her surprising and transformational readings of the period's drama, including Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Jonson's The Masque of Blackness and Shakespeare's Othello and Cymbeline.
"Making a contribution of the highest interest and importance to the growing field of early modern race studies, this book expands the scope of current inquiry by approaching from a new angle....Floyd-Wilson's complicated, multi-faceted argument challenges us to keep all of its strands in view. Her emphasis on transition makes her interpretive stance dynamic and far-reaching." Renaissance Quarterly
"Mary Floyd-Wilson's study of English ethnicity offers an important contribution to the study of race in the early modern period. Its account of geohumoral ethnology is innovative and fascinating." Seventeenth-Century News
ISBN: 9780521027311
Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 18mm
Weight: 409g
272 pages