Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction: Recovering the Contexts of Early Modern Proto-Racism

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 1-33

3. Harlequin as Theatergram: Transmitting the Timeworn Black Mask, Ancient to Antebellum

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 35-69

4. Beyond Good and Evil Symbolism: Allegories and Metaphysics of Blackfaced Folly from Augustine to Fanon

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 71-107

5. From Allegorical Type and Sartorial Satire to Minstrel Dandy Stereotype, Zip Coon, Jim Crow, and Blackface-on-Black Violence

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 109-141

6. Sambo Dialects: Defining National Language Boundaries via Early Representations of Stereotypically Black Speech

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 143-174

7. Blackface in Shakespeare: Challenging Racial Allegories of Folly and Speech—Cleopatra, Caliban, Othello

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 175-209

8. Shakespeare in Blackface: Black Shakespeareans versus Minstrel Burlesques, 1821–1844, or Othello versus Otello

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 211-242

9. Conclusion: A New Theory of Pre-Modern or Proto-Racism

   • Robert Hornback

   Pages 243-269

10. Afterword: White Nationalism, Trolling Humor as Propaganda, and the “Renaissance” of Christian Racism in the Age of Trump

    • Robert Hornback

    Pages 271-293

11. Back Matter

    Pages 295-324

    PDF

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.

• Blackface
• Racism
• Minstrel
• Fool
• Clown
• Slavery
• Colonialism
• Blackness
• Whiteness
• Shakespeare

• Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, GA, USA

  Robert Hornback

Robert Hornback is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Oglethorpe University, USA. He teaches Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Contemporaries, Medieval & Renaissance Literature, Ancient Literature, and Comedy: Ancient to Renaissance. He is the author of The English Clown Tradition from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare (2009) and has published widely on fools and comedy.

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