Race Before Race

Historical Context Essay

Emily MacLeod (Penn State University); Anita Raychawdhuri (University of Houston-Downtown)

Ed. by Virginia Mason Vaughan, Clark University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Domains

Race

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1500

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

When people today visualize early modern London, what do they imagine? Crowded streets, alive with a wide array of smells and sights, such as an occasional person decked out in a ruff, doublet, and hose, as is depicted in the CBBC series

Horrible Histories

or the 1998 flick

Shakespeare in Love.

Based on these images from popular culture, they might also assume that everyone in early modern England was white, and that race as we define it today was not actually a concept back then. This current assumption is notable in outrage about, for example, Jodie Turner-Smith (a Black woman) being cast as Anne Boleyn in the miniseries of the same name. Some angry viewers protested the casting choice because it went against historical accuracy. Aside from a totally separate argument about artistic…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

6731 words

Citation: MacLeod, Emily, Anita Raychawdhuri. "Race Before Race". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 December 2022 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19691, accessed 25 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Race Before Race

Domains

Dates

Places

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback