Black Aesthetic Irruptions in British Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

How do we account for the Black presence in British literature? How does the physicality of Blackness factor into the metaphysical fictionalization of Blackness in British literature? What change is made in British literature because of this aesthetic irruption of Blackness? These are just a few of the many questions this course will explore. Our course will start in early England by examining archives and literature written during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, then, we will delve into Modernism to look at how this irruption of Blackness worked its way into twentieth century British Literature. During sixteenth century England, there arose a Black physical presence due to the commodification of a new form of fashion—silk. Silk weavers, needle-makers, and other jobs were central to the Tudor period economy and several Africans were involved. These Black people who were brought into England created a rupture of space and time by way of their Blackness. Blackness, here, must be understood not simply as an essential racial category, but as a social and political disavowing of subjectivity from which Blackness has always already been excluded. In other words, the emergence of Blackness in the sixteenth and seventeenth century created new ways of thinking about what it means to be Black and questioned the very nature of ontology in British culture and literature. While this Black aesthetic irruption starts in early England, it is at its most used and recognized form in twentieth century modernist literature, and we are after these two moments in this class.