English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama

Abstract

In English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama, Mary Floyd-Wilson emphasizes the historical significance of geohumoralism, a concept denoting the theory of humors as understood through regional terms.In such a way she grounds in local terms the humoralist work of such scholars as Gail Paster and Michael Schoenfeldt.Wilson thus characterizes the reformation of geohumoral knowledge in early modern England as an attempt to disassociate the British from the southern peoples of Africa and, in turn, from their own barbaric history.To debunk previously established racialist notions, Wilson introduces her argument with an episode from Othello.When Emilia questions Desdemona about the jealous nature of Othello, Desdemona asserts, "I think the sun where he was born / Drew all such humours from him" (3.4.28-9).Wilson criticizes the modern reader's anachronistic tendency to believe that he or she knows better than Desdemona the disposition of her lover's temperament, for, to the early modern mind, Desdemona's claim would have been accurate; that is, because Othello was a Moor, he was believed not to be subject to jealousy.And so, Wilson argues, "English Ethnicity aims to recover Desdemona's knowledge, but more than that, this book seeks to understand how and why Desdemona came to be proven wrong" (p.19).Hence, by beginning her work with a reevaluation of early modern conceptions of race, Wilson prepares her readers for a close study of the history of classical geohumoralism that will reveal the deep-rootedness of the English attempt at compensating for their self-perceived marginalization.Part I of Wilson's text, entitled "Climatic Culture: The Transmissions of Ethnographic Knowledge," aims to reeducate readers on the significance of the geohumoral tradition in the early modern mind.Chapter 1, "The Ghost of Hippocrates: Geohumoral History," discredits Hippocrates' incomplete text, Airs, Waters, Places, as an influential scientific work during this era, while stressing the authority of the opposing humoralist theories of Aristotle, Jean Bodin, and Albertus Magnus, among others.Whereas Hippocrates maintains that the "relationship between the atmosphere and a person's humors is analogous. . . .Other classical writers will consistently argue for a counteractive relationship between internal and external temperatures, that is, cold air makes for hot blood" (p.25).Consequently, unlike the moderate temperaments of those living in the Mediterranean, people living in the other two regions of the tripartite world were seen as endowed with opposing humors that were barbaric in nature because of the climatic extremities of their habitats: "those in the north are white, ignorant, dull-witted, brave and physically strong; southerners are black, learned, wise, cowardly, and physically weak" (p.31).In accordance with geohumoral theory, Africans and northern Europeans were similarly regarded as barbarians primarily because of the adverse effect of the environment on their humors.As Wilson will show more clearly in Chapter 2, humoralism and ethnology are inseparable concepts in early modern England.

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