1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456962203321

Autore

Feerick Jean E (Jean Elizabeth), <1968->

Titolo

Strangers in blood : relocating race in the Renaissance / / Jean E. Feerick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2010

©2010

ISBN

1-4426-6008-2

1-4426-8694-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (287 p.)

Disciplina

820.9/355

Soggetti

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Race in literature

Social classes in literature

Blood in literature

Human skin color in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Bloodwork -- 1. Blemished Bloodlines and The Faerie Queene, Book 2 -- 2. Uncouth Milk and the Irish Wet Nurse -- 3. Cymbeline and Virginia's British Climate -- 4. Passion and Degeneracy in Tragicomic Island Plays -- 5. High Spirits, Nature's Ranks, and Ligon's Indies -- Coda: Beyond the Renaissance -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Strangers in Blood explores, in a range of early modern literature, the association between migration to foreign lands and the moral and physical degeneration of individuals. Arguing that, in early modern discourse, the concept of race was primarily linked with notions of bloodline, lineage, and genealogy rather than with skin colour and ethnicity, Jean E. Feerick establishes that the characterization of settler communities as subject to degenerative decline constituted a massive challenge to the fixed system of blood that had hitherto underpinned



the English social hierarchy.Considering contexts as diverse as Ireland, Virginia, and the West Indies, Strangers in Blood tracks the widespread cultural concern that moving out of England would adversely affect the temper and complexion of the displaced individual, changes that could be fought only through willed acts of self-discipline. In emphasizing the decline of blood as found at the centre of colonial narratives, Feerick illustrates the unwitting disassembling of one racial system and the creation of another.