{"id":24887,"date":"2012-08-20T21:08:08","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T21:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24887"},"modified":"2017-03-31T19:06:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T19:06:13","slug":"imoinda%e2%80%99s-shade-marriage-and-the-african-woman-in-eighteenth-century-british-literature-1759%e2%80%931808","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24887","title":{"rendered":"Imoinda\u2019s Shade: Marriage and the African Woman in Eighteenth-Century British Literature, 1759\u20131808"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imoinda\u2019s Shade: Marriage and the African Woman in Eighteenth-Century British Literature, 1759\u20131808<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ohio State University Press<\/a>
\nMay 2012
\n289 paes
\n6×9
\nCloth ISBN: 978-0-8142-1185-4
\nCD-ROM ISBN: 978-0-8142-9286-0<\/p>\n

Lyndon J. Dominique<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English
\nLehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the eighteenth century is entirely bereft of narratives written by African women, one might assume that these women had little to no impact on British literature and the national psyche of the period. Yet these kinds of assumptions are belied by the influence of one prominent African woman featured in the period\u2019s literary texts.<\/p>\n

Imoinda\u2019s Shade<\/em> examines the ways in which British writers utilize the most popular African female figure in eighteenth-century fiction and drama to foreground the African woman\u2019s concerns and interests as well as those of a British nation grappling with the problems of slavery and abolition. Imoinda, the fictional phenomenon initially conceived by Aphra Behn<\/a> and subsequently popularized by Thomas Southerne<\/a>, has an influence that extends well beyond the Oroonoko<\/a><\/em> novella and drama that established her as a formidable presence during the late Restoration period<\/a>. This influence is palpably discerned in the characterizations of African women drawn up in novels and dramas written by late-eighteenth-century British writers. Through its examinations of the textual instances from 1759\u20131808 when Imoinda and her involvement in the Oroonoko<\/em> marriage plot are being transformed and embellished for politicized ends, Imoinda\u2019s Shade<\/em> demonstrates how this period\u2019s fictional African women were deliberately constructed by progressive eighteenth-century writers to popularize issues of rape, gynecological rebellion, and miscegenation. Moreover, it shows how these specific African female concerns influence British antislavery, abolitionist, and post-slavery discourse in heretofore unheralded, unusual, and sometimes radical ways.<\/p>\n

Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n