And to follow on John's point (and perhaps tie some of this
together): Similar to other forms of racial logic, race as family lineage
in the early modern period buttressed a political arrangement with a
fantasy of the body. Similarly too, this concept of race bore a signature
of color expressed in the face. Shakespeare plays upon these contemporary
apprehensions of race in *II Henry IV*:
PRINCE HENRY: Before God, I am exceeding weary.
POINS: Is’t come to that? I had thought weariness durst not have
attached one of so high blood.
PRINCE HENRY: Faith, it does me; though it discolours the
complexion
of my greatness to acknowledge it. (II.ii.1-5)
Of course, Henry simply means that it discredits his rank to admit that he
is physiologically (humorally) as weak as other men. But his terms are no
accident: Elyot maintains in *The castel of helthe* that those possessed of
“equalytie of humours” are visually marked by “redde and whyte” skin,
whereas those with an “inequalyte of humours” have skin that is “blacke,
sallow…or whyte onely.” Color marks the humoral equilibrium—the superior
moral disposition—of the social superiors of the play precisely because the
humors were thought to be in equilibrium in noble subjects. “Complexion” in
Henry’s phrasing refers to both the humoral constitution of an individual,
and the external hue that is a sign of inner disposition. He is therefore
suggesting that his admission sullies his noble status, but he is also
punning on the visible marker of his noble blood: the color of his skin.
I have written about this elsewhere, so I'm just cutting and pasting here.
But it seemed that these observations might be helpful to bring some of
these intersecting points of humoral theory together.
On Tue, Jul 17, 2018 at 11:57 PM, Jon Quitslund <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> There are a couple of lines of inquiry that I haven't seen mentioned yet.
> First, in my teaching years ago I was inclined to understand "your force"
> as a reference to Redcrosse's possession, in some abundance amounting to
> overconfidence, of the first cardinal virtue, Fortitudo. And "faith"
> refers to his calling as the patron / pattern of Holinesse, which in his
> case has has not yet got.
>
> Second, I expect that "race," for Spenser, was almost entirely a matter of
> "blood," and of lineage. Redcrosse himself learns only later of his true
> lineage, although his noble blood has prompted him on a very ambitious
> course. Una, presumably, knows her true lineage all along but it is
> belatedly revealed to us readers.
>
> The phenomenology of blood in FQ is a topic that remains to be examined.
> There is a theological register in Book One, conspicuous in the knight's
> nickname, and the opening episode of Book Two plays off against it with the
> enigma of "blood guiltiness," the bloody handed babe, and a revenge agenda
> over against the salvation / redemption agenda of Book One. In Book One
> the blood of Errour is printer's ink. But vital blood throughout the poem
> is the medium in which vital spirits are generated and made available, in
> either base or noble natures, in physical activity and consciousness.
>
> Are the Faerie knights in the poem (Guyon and Arthegal, not to mention
> Gloriana) a race apart? Perhaps some of you have thought this through.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jon Quitslund
>
>
> On Tuesday, July 17, 2018 6:49 PM, Martin Mueller <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> When did "white" become a term through which people describe their own
> ethnic/racial identity or that of others? Iago clearly sees Othello as
> "black", but did he think of himself as "white"? I have all the TCP texts
> on my computer and wrote a little Python script that looks for all
> occurrences where the adjective 'white' is followed by 'man', 'woman',
> 'child', 'person', 'people'. There does not appear to be a single
> occurrence of such a bigram in 5,200 texts before 1610.
>
> Assuming that my search was accurate and complete--not a totally safe
> assumption--the lexical evidence should make you skeptical about claiming a
> 'racialized' component in the meaning of 'white' in the Faerie Queene or
> any other text of that period. Which is not to say that there was no
> racism in that world--there clearly was. Italian has the lovely word
> 'tintura' as a technical term for the tonal colouring of a work (the
> opening of Verdi's Simone Boccanegra is a stupendous example). So we might
> think of the 'tintura' of a word and of ways in which it changes over time.
> 'White' is a heavily racialized word in our world, but I doubt whether it
> was racialized at all in Spenser's world.
>
> To question a racializing tintura of 'white' in the 16th century is not to
> question the fact that Spenser more than once " associate[s] sexual excess
> and perversion with foreign locals, religions, and peoples." He certainly
> did. Whether he did so more often or in different ways than others is an
> open question. There is a long history of such behaviour going all the way
> back to Herodotus (who probably was a more tolerant person than Spenser).
> Una's spectacular whiteness is adequately accounted for by the opposition
> of night and day. Think of Milton's sonnet about his "late espoused saint"
> with its play on 'white', 'light', and 'night'.
>
> On 7/17/18, 5:20 PM, "Sidney-Spenser Discussion List on behalf of Kathryn
> Walls" <[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> If I may interject once more: Una's whiteness is completely obscured
> by her "blacke stole". This associates her with the bride in the Song of
> Songs, who is "blacke . . . but comely". In his sermon on the Song of
> Songs, Beza identifies the bride's blackness and mourning with sin and
> guilt, with which even the elect are infected. Her comeliness (which is
> her whiteness in Spenser) he identifies with the innocence bestowed upon
> the elect by Christ (Spenser's white lamb), the divine innocence which
> covers our sinfulness from the sight of a loving God. See Master Bezaes
> sermons vpon the three chapters pf the canticle of canticles, trans. John
> Harmar (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1587). Beza anticpates Spenser in
> representing both blackness and beauty as garments.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:SIDNEY-SPENSER@
> JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Dennis Britton
>
> Sent: Wednesday, 18 July 2018 9:53 a.m.
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Subject: Re: The Faerie Queene and Race: Book 1
>
>
>
> A lively discussion has begun on Twitter. Kim posted what I think is
> an important question that I believe would be useful to consider here:
>
>
>
> Beginning with Melissa Sanchez's assertions that Spenser more than
> once "associate[s] sexual excess and perversion with foreign locals,
> religions, and peoples," Kim asked, "It seems worth asking from the start
> the extent to which the moral encoding of figures in the FQ is embodied and
> racialized--and particularly important if we are to begin understanding the
> embodied terms of Spenser's religious allegory. How do we understand, then,
> the spectacular whiteness of Una? She rides "Upon a lowly Asse more white
> than snow, / Yet she much whiter," and tows "in line a milke white lamb"
> (I.i.4).
>
>
>
> Does Una have a racial identity? Do the race (and gender) of
> allegorical figures matter?
>
>
>
> Also, don't forget to join the conversation on Twitter! #TeamFQandRace
>
>
>
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Associate Professor, English
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3127 Tawes Hall
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