Smith, Ian, 1957 June 9-
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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Part of the series Early modern cultural studies;Early modern cultural studies.
Notes:

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-216) and index.
• Introduction. Barbarous African, barbarous English, and the transactions of race — Classical precedents — Race in perspective — Barbarian genealogies — Instructing the English nation — Shakespeare’s Africans : Performing race in Early Modern England — Epilogue. Imperialism’s legacy, or the Language of the criminal.
• 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. –Jacket.

Subjects:

• English literature — Early modern, 1500-1700 — History and criticism.
• Race in literature.
• Blacks in literature.
• Africans in literature.
• Renaissance — England.
• Rhetoric — England — History — 16th century.
• Rhetoric — England — History — 17th century.

Requested by Wittenbreer, B