Barbarous Play

Like our own, early modern beliefs about race depended on metaphorical, selective, and contradictory understandings of how membership in groups is determined. Although race took distinctive forms in the past, the fallacies that underlie early modern racial experience generally are precisely-and surprisingly-the same as those in contemporary culture.   Exploring the similar underpinnings of early modern and contemporary ideas of difference, Barbarous Play examines English Renaissance underst