The Tempest and Early Modern Conceptions of Race

Dados Bibliográficos

ID23450421
AutoresVirginia Mason Vaughan, Alden T Vaughan
Ano2021
Páginas139-157
Data de publicação2021-02-28
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoCambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781108684750.010
OpenAlexW3127576476
ISBN9781108684750
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas4

The Tempest reflects early modern European trends in racial perceptions, especially in the play’s foregrounding of Caliban, who embodies many of the era’s cultural prejudices. Although Caliban was born on a remote island and is its sole human inhabitant when Prospero and Miranda arrive, his sexual assault on Miranda and their contempt for Caliban as savage, pagan, monstrous, and perhaps cannibalistic provokes Prospero to enslave him. This chapter contextualizes those demeaning categories in light of Caliban’s African and perhaps American roots. Among the developments that profoundly shaped England’s (and presumably Shakespeare’s) attitudes toward “Blackamoores” were the increasingly numerous Africans arriving as offshoots of the international slave trade. Concurrently, Spain’s and Portugal’s settlements in Central and South America and their exploitation, often enslavement, of the natives strongly influenced English policies toward racial “others” at home and in England’s colonies, as did Iberian America’s extensive importation of African slaves.

Art · Art history · Contempt · Ethnology · Foregrounding · Geography · Literature · Political science · Race (biology) · Sociology · Tempest · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Early Modern Spanish Literature · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture