Just to report an interesting cultural difference. Thinking about Joe's
question I remembered that in Petronius' Satyricon some of the characters
disguise themselves as slaves, but of course in ancient Rome that could
mean any and all racial types, so there's no blackface, just a lot of
willingness to be flogged--which in Petronius isn't so bad a deal. Had
this been written in the Renaissance I suspect there's be some about burnt
cork etc. Such was racial confusion on occasion that in
Parsival--Wolfram's romance, I mean--the half-African character is
piebald, like a magpie, we read. Half and half, so to speak, but not
creamy. Joe, I'm still thinking, and I've sent Kim Hall an e-mail. Anne.
> A question, asked on behalf of a graduate student working on 'blackface'
> disguise in Renaissance drama (characters disguising themselves as Turks,
> Moors,
> etc.): are there instances in Renaissance prose romances of the use of
> blackface
> or other types of racial/cultural cross-dressing for purposes of disguise?
>
> Lots of disguisings come to mind, of course, but mostly cross-gender and
> cross-class. Cross-cultural or cross-racial examples don't spring to
> mind, but
> I may very well be missing the obvious. Surely somebody somewhere in
> those
> texts disguises as a Moor, perhaps as a ruse de guerre, or tournament
> persona?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Joseph Black
> University of Massachusetts Amherst
>
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