A play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte's El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.

A play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.

In this groundbreaking study, Diana Berruezo-Sánchez recovers key chapters in the history of Afro-Iberian diasporas by exploring the literary contributions and life experiences of black African communities and individuals in early modern Spain. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, international trade involving chattel slavery led to significant populations of enslaved, free(d), and half-manumitted black African women, men, and children in the Iberian Peninsula. These demographic changes transformed Spain's urban and social landscapes. In exploring Spain's role in the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on cultural forms of the period, Berruezo-Sánchez examines a broad range of texts and unearths new documents relating to black African poets, performers, and black confraternities. Her discoveries evince the broad yet largely disregarded literary and artistic impact of the African diaspora in early modern Spain, expanding the scope of linguistic practices beyond habla de negros and creating space for early modern black poets in the Spanish literary canon. These textual sources challenge established understandings of black Africans and black African history in early modern Spain. They show how black Africans exerted significant cultural agency by collectively contributing to and shaping the literary texts of the period, including those of the popular genre villancicos de negros, and by developing artistic traditions as musicians, dancers, and poets. As both creators and consumers of cultural forms, black African men and women navigated a restrictive, coercive slave society yet negotiated their own physical and cultural spaces.

Bad Blood explores representations of race in early modern English and Spanish literature, especially drama. It addresses two different forms of racial ideology: one concerned with racialized religious difference--that is, the notion of having Jewish or Muslim "blood"--and one concerned with Blackness and whiteness. Shakespeare's Othello tells us that he was "sold to slavery" in his youth, a phrase that evokes the Atlantic triangle trade for readers today. For many years, however, scholars have asserted that racialized slavery was not yet widely understood in early modern England, and that the kind of enslavement that Othello describes is related to Christian-Muslim conflict in the Mediterranean rather than the rise of the racialized enslavement of Afro-diasporic subjects. Bad Blood offers a new account of early modern race by tracing the development of European racial vocabularies from Spain to England. Dispelling assumptions, stemming from Spain's historical exclusion of Jews and Muslims, that premodern racial ideology focused on religious difference and purity of blood more than color, Emily Weissbourd argues that the context of the Atlantic slave trade is indispensable to understanding race in early modern Spanish and English literature alike. Through readings of plays by Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and their contemporaries, as well as Spanish picaresque fiction and its English translations, Weissbourd reveals how ideologies of racialized slavery as well as religious difference come to England via Spain, and how both notions of race operate in conjunction to shore up fantasies of Blackness, whiteness, and "pure blood." The enslavement of Black Africans, Weissbourd shows, is inextricable from the staging of race in early modern literature.

Blacks have played a significant part in European civilization since ancient times. This encyclopedia illuminates blacks in European history, literature, and popular culture. It emphasizes the considerable scope of black influence in, and contributions to, European culture. The first blacks arrived in Europe as slaves and later as laborers and soldiers, and black immigrants today along with others are transforming Europe into multicultural states. This indispensable set expands our knowledge of blacks in Western civilization. More than 350 essay entries introduce students and other readers to the white European response to blacks in their countries, the black experiences and impact there, and the major interactions between Europe and Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States that resulted in the settling of blacks in Europe. The range of information presented is impressive, with entries on noted European political, literary, and cultural figures of black descent from ancient times to the present, major literary works that had a substantial impact on European perceptions of blacks, black holidays and festivals, the struggle for civil equality for blacks, the role and influence of blacks in contemporary European popular culture, black immigration to Europe, black European identity, and much more. Offered as well are entries on organizations that contributed to the development of black political and social rights in Europe, representations of blacks in European art and cultural symbols, and European intellectual and scientific theories on blacks. Individual entries on Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Central Europe, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe include historical overviews of the presence and contributions of blacks and discussion of country's role in the African slave trade and abolition and its colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. Suggestions for further reading accompany each entry. A chronology, resource guide, and photos complement the text.

Blacks have played a significant part in European civilization since ancient times. This encyclopedia illuminates blacks in European history, literature, and popular culture. It emphasizes the considerable scope of black influence in, and contributions to, European culture. The first blacks arrived in Europe as slaves and later as laborers and soldiers, and black immigrants today along with others are transforming Europe into multicultural states. This indispensable set expands our knowledge of blacks in Western civilization.

Magicians, necromancers and astrologers are assiduous characters in the European golden age theatre. This book deals with dramatic characters who act as physiognomists or palm readers in the fictional world and analyses the fictionalisation of physiognomic lore as a practice of divination in early modern Romance theatre from Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Thomas Corneille.

The Revolt in the Low Countries is one of the major conflicts of early modern Europe. Though it is mostly seen as a war between the Dutch and the Spanish, in reality it was a complex civil war with international involvement. This book returns to the original war narratives of the period, re-establishing the multi-faceted character of the conflict.