Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness and the Natalie Zamon Davis's conception of Africa

I really enjoyed all the raedings this weekend. They were all different and all enlightening in their own way. Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness was really fascinating. I feel it is really unique and teachable. I definitely want to teach it some day. It is fascinating to read about the English superiority and the place of King James in the scheme of things. It was Queen Anne for whom the Masque was written as she wanted to be seen as a blak woman. The lines, "As of Phaeton that fired the world.." were interesting as they convey the white presumption that black people were miserable as the sun had blackened them. Also interesting was to note that the sun is actually King James in "Britannia who makes all tongues sing..."The King can possibly cure them of their physical wounds as well as political displacement.The image of a hundred torch bearers around the Black God Niger dressed in silver and azure sounds compelling. I wished every minute that I could see the Masque. On your left is the image of the Masque I found in a painting.Its pretty close to what I had in mind for the torch bearers.


Davis' Conception of Africa made fascinating reading as well. Chapter 5 of Trickster Travels did the trick for me, the earlier chapters did not. I liked finding out that Africa comes from Ifriqiya although I also read other versions of its name making. It was also interesting to read the debate on Egypt on Page 129 .Here are a few other stories around the name Africa from wikipedia.org:

• the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
• the Latin word aprica, meaning "sunny", mentioned by Isidore of Seville (sixth century) in Etymologiae XIV.5.2
• the Greek word aphrike, meaning "without cold." This was proposed by historian Leo Africanus (1488–1554), who suggested the Greek word phrike (φρίκη, meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the privative prefix "a-", thus indicating a land free of cold and horror.
• Massey, in 1881, derived an etymology from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."^[8]

The Irish female name Aifric is sometimes Anglicised as Africa, but the personal name is unrelated to the geonym