Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern PeriodShakespeare and Race is a provocative new study that reveals a connection between the subject of race in Shakespeare and the advent of early English colonialism. Citing generally neglected archival evidence, Imtiaz Habib argues that a small population of captured Indians and Africans brought to England during the 16th century provided the impetus for Elizabethan constructions of race rather than existing European traditions in which blackness was represented metaphorically. He explores Tudor and Stuart dramatic representations of black characters, focusing specifically on how race affected Shakespeare personally and historically over the course of his career. Using postcolonial paradigms combined with neo-Marxist, feminist, and psychoanalytic insights, Habib discusses the possible existence of a black woman that Shakespeare knew and wrote about in his Sonnets and examines the design of his black male characters, including Aaron, Othello, and Caliban. Shakespeare and Race represents a significant contribution that will fascinate scholars of literature as well as those interested in the cultural impact of colonialism. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Homosocial Eugenics and Black Desire | 23 |
T S Eliot Othellos | 121 |
Copyright | |
5 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Aaron African agenda alien Antony and Cleopatra Antony's black subject black woman black woman's consciousness Caliban cited colonial colonialism's colonized black colonizer's color construction contemporary crouching described desire discourse discursive subject earlier early modern England early modern English Egyptian Eliot's Elizabethan English colonial essay ethnic European gender historical homosocial identity imperial incarceration Indian inscription instance instinct Kim Hall language latter Liebler literary London Loomba male material memory metropolis mimetic narrative native native's Old Dominion University Othello patriarchal Peter Fryer play play's poem's poems poet poet-lover poet-lover's poet's poetic subject pointed political postcolonial postcolonial critical postmodern presence Prospero's queen race racial Renaissance representation resistance rhetorical Roman Rome semiotic seventeenth century sexual Shakespeare Shakespeare's Sonnets social sonnet 21 Sonnets speech struggle sub-sequence subaltern subjugation Tamora Tempest text's textual thee thematic Things of Darkness thou Titus Andronicus tragedy Tudor unknowability unpredictability Venice visible Walvin writing young