White Lies, Black Lives, Rebecca Adusei: 7th December

The Race and the Early Modern seminar is delighted to be welcoming Rebecca Adusei on 7th December to discuss a paper titled: ‘White Lies, Black Lives’. To participate, sign up via the link below. This is a work-in-progress session. The paper will be distributed in advance of the session.

Date and Time: Monday 7th December, 17:00 (BST)/12:oo (ET)

Sign up here: https://buytickets.at/centreforearlymodernstudies/2022021

Paper Abstract

This chapter will look at sonnet cycles to observe and analyse how Black femininity is presented in these mediums. Building on the work of Kim F. Hall in Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, I will look at what Hall calls ‘poetics of colour’, which centres on the aspiration for and yearning towards Whiteness, and how this interacts with representations of Black femininity. The poems that I will analyse include ‘Of Nigrina’ by Edwards Guilpin, ‘A Black-moor Maid wooing a fair Boy’ by Henry Rainolds and Edward Herbert’s ‘Sonnet of Black Beauty’. I will juxtapose these texts alongside the canonical and much-discussed sonnets of William Shakespeare.