Whitaker, Cord J. "Blackness as metaphor." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/blackness-as-metaphor. [Date accessed].
Blackness as metaphor
The metaphor of Blackness deployed in medieval epics was a rhetorical tool that aided early racial formation.
Many medieval epics regale their audiences with the phenomenon of skin color change, often in the context of religious conversion. The metaphor of Blackness at play in these epics offers a way to understand how phenotypic traits were used as markers of good or evil in the literature and culture of medieval Europe. The long history of racial construction has its roots in how Blackness is leveraged as a metaphor over hundreds of years.
Further learning
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Recommended
Blackness and Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare’s works at large, and early modern literature more broadly, all deal with constructions of race. Shakespeare’s sonnets are especially fruitful for considering how the languages of fairness and darkness are used in nuanced ways to develop particular understandings of race.
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