Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England

by Sujata Iyengar

Overview

Was there such a thing as a modern notion of race in the English Renaissance, and, if so, was skin color its necessary marker? In fact, early modern texts described human beings of various national origins—including English—as turning white, brown, tawny, black, green, or red for any number of reasons, from the effects of the sun's rays or imbalance of the bodily humors to sexual desire or the application of makeup. It is in this cultural environment that the seventeenth-century London Gazette used the term "black" to describe both dark-skinned African runaways and dark-haired Britons, such as Scots, who are now unquestioningly conceived of as "white."

In Shades of Difference, Sujata Iyengar explores the cultural mythologies of skin color in a period during which colonial expansion and the slave trade introduced Britons to more dark-skinned persons than at any other time in their history. Looking to texts as divergent as sixteenth-century Elizabethan erotic verse, seventeenth-century lyrics, and Restoration prose romances, Iyengar considers the construction of race during the early modern period without oversimplifying the emergence of race as a color-coded classification or a black/white opposition. Rather, "race," embodiment, and skin color are examined in their multiple contexts—historical, geographical, and literary. Iyengar engages works that have not previously been incorporated into discussions of the formation of race, such as Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis." By rethinking the emerging early modern connections between the notions of race, skin color, and gender, Shades of Difference furthers an ongoing discussion with originality and impeccable scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812202335
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	04/12/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sujata Iyengar teaches English at the University of Georgia.

Table of Contents

	List of Abbreviations	ix
	Introduction	1
Part I	Ethiopian Histories
1	Pictures of Andromeda Naked	19
2	Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bride	44
3	Masquing Race	80
Part II	Whiteness Visible
4	Heroic Blushing	103
5	Blackface and Blushface	123
6	Whiteness as Sexual Difference	140
Part III	Travail Narratives
7	Artificial Negroes	173
8	Suntanned Slaves	200
9	Experiments of Colors	220
	Afterword: Nancy Burson's Human Race Machine	241
	Notes	245
	Bibliography	269
	Index	299
	Acknowledgments	309

Editorial Reviews

"A work of impressive scholarship."

The Historian

"When did racial differences become racial prejudices? . . . Sujata Iyengar argues in this bold book that the search for a 'straightforward historical trajectory' from racialism to racism ought to be resisted. She argues that the history of 'race' as a literary, cultural, and social construct is far more polyvalent than has been previously acknowledged."

Sixteenth Century Journal

"When did racial differences become racial prejudices? . . . Sujata Iyengar argues in this bold book that the search for a 'straightforward historical trajectory' from racialism to racism ought to be resisted. She argues that the history of 'race' as a literary, cultural, and social construct is far more polyvalent than has been previously acknowledged."—Sixteenth Century Journal

"A work of impressive scholarship."—The Historian

From the Publisher