Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions

✍ Scribed by Robert Hornback

Publisher: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2018
Tongue: English
Leaves: 331
Series: Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History
Edition: 1st ed.
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

This book traces blackface types from ancient masks of grinning Africans and phallus-bearing Roman fools through to comedic medieval devils, the pan-European black-masked Titivillus and Harlequin, and racial impersonation via stereotypical 'black speech' explored in the Renaissance by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare. Jim Crow and antebellum minstrelsy recycled Old World blackface stereotypes of irrationality, ignorance, pride, and immorality. Drawing upon biblical interpretations and philosophy, comic types from moral allegory originated supposedly modern racial stereotypes. Early blackface traditions thus spread damning race-belief that black people were less rational, hence less moral and less human. Such notions furthered the global Renaissance’s intertwined Atlantic slave and sugar trades and early nationalist movements. The latter featured overlapping definitions of race and nation, as well as of purity of blood, language, and religion in opposition to 'Strangers'. Ultimately, Old World beliefs still animate supposed 'biological racism' and so-called 'white nationalism' in the age of Trump.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv
Introduction: Recovering the Contexts of Early Modern Proto-Racism (Robert Hornback)....Pages 1-33
Harlequin as Theatergram: Transmitting the Timeworn Black Mask, Ancient to Antebellum (Robert Hornback)....Pages 35-69
Beyond Good and Evil Symbolism: Allegories and Metaphysics of Blackfaced Folly from Augustine to Fanon (Robert Hornback)....Pages 71-107
From Allegorical Type and Sartorial Satire to Minstrel Dandy Stereotype, Zip Coon, Jim Crow, and Blackface-on-Black Violence (Robert Hornback)....Pages 109-141
Sambo Dialects: Defining National Language Boundaries via Early Representations of Stereotypically Black Speech (Robert Hornback)....Pages 143-174
Blackface in Shakespeare: Challenging Racial Allegories of Folly and Speech—Cleopatra, Caliban, Othello (Robert Hornback)....Pages 175-209
Shakespeare in Blackface: Black Shakespeareans versus Minstrel Burlesques, 1821–1844, or Othello versus Otello (Robert Hornback)....Pages 211-242
Conclusion: A New Theory of Pre-Modern or Proto-Racism (Robert Hornback)....Pages 243-269
Afterword: White Nationalism, Trolling Humor as Propaganda, and the “Renaissance” of Christian Racism in the Age of Trump (Robert Hornback)....Pages 271-293
Back Matter ....Pages 295-324

✦ Subjects

Cultural and Media Studies; Theatre History; National/Regional Theatre and Performance; Imperialism and Colonialism

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