Black Africans in Renaissance Europe

This book, first published in 2005, is an innovative account of black African experience and representation in Renaissance Europe.

T. F. Earle (Edited by), K. J. P. Lowe (Edited by)

9780521815826, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 May 2005

434 pages, 67 b/w illus.
25.3 x 19.8 x 4 cm, 1.115 kg

'… the collection is valuable for the excellent essays it does provide and especially for the insights into attitudes toward Otherness, especially that racial biasses are the product of one's particular social and political situation, and the discourses that are constructed around them.' Mary C. Olson, Sixteenth Century Journal

This book, first published in 2005, opens up the much neglected area of the black African presence in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Covering history, literature, art history and anthropology, it investigates a whole range of black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe, from various types of slavery to black musicians and dancers, from real and symbolic Africans at court to the view of the Catholic Church, and from writers of African descent to black African 'criminality'. The main purpose of the collection is to show the variety and complexity of black African life in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by firmly held preconceptions relating to the African continent and its inhabitants. Of enormous importance for both European and American history, this book mixes empirical material and theoretical approaches, and addresses such issues as stereotypes, changing black African identity, and cultural representation in art and literature.

Introduction: the black African presence in Renaissance Europe Kate Lowe
Part I. Conceptualising Black Africans: 1. The stereotyping of black Africans in Renaissance Europe Kate Lowe
2. The image of Africa and the iconography of lip-plated Africans in Pierre Desceliers's World Map of 1550 Jean Michel Massing
3. Black Africans in Renaissance Spanish literature Jeremy Lawrance
4. Washing the Ethiopian white: conceptualising black skin in Renaissance England Anu Korhonen
5. Black Africans in Portugal during Cleynaerts's visit (1533–8) Jorge Fonseca
Part II. Real and Symbolic Black Africans at Court: 6. Isabella d'Este and black African women Paul H. D. Kaplan
7. Images of empire: slaves in the Lisbon household and court of Catherine of Austria Annemarie Jordan
8. Christoph Jamnitzer's 'Moor's Head': a late Renaissance drinking vessel Lorenz Seelig
Part III. The Practicalities of Enslavement and Emancipation: 9. The trade in black African slaves in fifteenth-century Florence Sergio Tognetti
10. 'La Casa dels Negres': black African solidarity in late medieval Valencia Debra Blumenthal
11. Free and freed black Africans in Granada in the time of the Spanish Renaissance Aurelia Martín Casares
12. Black African slaves and freedmen in Portugal during the Renaissance: creating a new pattern of reality Didier Lahon
13. The Catholic Church and the pastoral care of black Africans in Renaissance Italy Nelson H. Minnich
Part IV. Black Africans with European Identities and Profiles: 14. Race and rulership: Alessandro de' Medici, first Medici duke of Florence, 1529–37 John K. Brackett
15. Juan Latino and his racial difference Baltasar Fra-Molinero
16. Black Africans versus Jews: religious and racial tension in a Portuguese saint's play T. F. Earle
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], African history [HBJH], European history [HBJD]