Shades of difference
Subtitle: mythologies of skin color in early modern England
By: Sujata Iyengar.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 307
ISBN-13: 9780812202335
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; Race in literature; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 16th century; Literature and society -- England -- History -- 17th century; Human skin color -- Social aspects -- England; Difference (Psychology) in literature; Human skin color in literature; Mythology in literature; Blacks in literature; England -- Race relations -- History -- 16th century; England -- Race relations -- History -- 17th century
Description: "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."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-297) and index.