Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors (Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700)

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. Review: "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 and religion, functioned as an important racial code. This study also reveals that 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."--BOOK JACKET Cover 1 Contents 8 Series Editors’ Foreword 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: Barbarous African, Barbarous English, and the Transactions of Race 14 Chapter 1: Classical Precedents 36 Chapter 2: Race in Perspective 58 Chapter 3: Barbarian Genealogies 86 Chapter 4: Instructing the English Nation 110 Chapter 5: Shakespeare's Africans: Performing Race in Early Modern England 136 Epilogue: Imperialism's Legacy, or the "Language of the Criminal" 168 Notes 176 Works Cited 208 Index 230 A 230 B 231 C 233 D 233 E 234 F 235 G 235 H 236 I 237 J 237 K 237 L 238 M 238 N 239 O 239 P 240 Q 241 R 241 S 243 T 243 U 244 V 244 W 244 X 244 Z 244 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.