The Global Consequences of Mistranslation: The Adoption of the “Black but …” Formulation in Europe, 1440–1650
This article investigates the genesis of a linguistic model occasioned by a mistranslation that was taken up in the Renaissance, and had an enduring global impact. I call this model the “black but…” formulation, and it is to be found in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout w...
| Autor principal: | |
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| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Gargar...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publicado: |
MDPI
[2012]
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| En: |
Religions
Año: 2012, Volumen: 3, Número: 3, Páginas: 544-555 |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
Slave
B Renacimiento B Black B linguistic formulation B “Song of Songs” |
| Acceso en línea: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Sumario: | This article investigates the genesis of a linguistic model occasioned by a mistranslation that was taken up in the Renaissance, and had an enduring global impact. I call this model the “black but…” formulation, and it is to be found in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout written texts and reported speech, in historical as well as literary works. It was modeled grammatically and ideologically on the statement “I am black but beautiful” often attributed to the Queen of Sheba in 1:5 of the “Song of Songs”, and had a detrimental effect on how members of the early African forced diaspora were viewed by Renaissance Europeans. I argue that the newly adversarial nature of the phrase was adopted as a linguistic and cultural formulation, and introduced into Western European cultures a whole way of approaching and perceiving blackness or looking at black African people. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel3030544 |