Tamburlaine

Marlowe’s treatment – and, I suppose, Renaissance views – of race are curious. While the Jew is demonized, the Muslim is revered. I think the connections betweens Jews and money and between Muslims and military force are largely responsible here. The fear of Jews manifests itself in lore of poisoned wells and kidnapped children, whereas the Islamic nations posed a significant and real threat. And, along those lines, the Jewish threat was perceived as very real, but didn’t really exist, while the Islamic threat seemed to be less realized but in actuality was very great. These fears even seemed to be echoed today, with a strong perception of an Islamic military (or terrorist) threat and the sort of conspiracy theory idea that the U.S. government and the nation of Israel have a political, and more influential financial relationship.

My favorite lines come not from Tamburlaine, but from Techelles in 1.2.52-54: "As princely lions when the rouse themselves, / Stretching their paws, and threat'ning herds of beasts, / So in his armor looketh Tamburlaine."

Marlowe's use of language

Tamburlaine so far reinforces Marlowe's wonderful command of the English language. Even though he wrote in the Early Modern period and the use of language in that period is different, often times radically so, than our current style, his clever word choice and subtle character development through spoken words leaves me chuckling to myself or otherwise impressed with Marlowe's writing. I like how Marlowe develops Tamburlaine as an opposite to Mycetes and Cosroe, and the witty (on Marlowe's behalf) banter between the brothers, who are both very full of themselves and, for the most part, completely stupid. Tamburlaine's posturing by laying out his gold and how he so swiftly talks his opponents into supporting him are all beautiful examples of both Marlowe's command of the language in form and in content.

a renaissance... mostly

The past few weeks I've been doing a good bit of research on Africans and race in Early Modern England. As this is the Renaissance, I associate it with an explosion of culture, art, music, literature, trade, and general expansion. It seems so contrary, then, that race seems to be lumped into the single definition "moor," where if it isn't English White Christian normal, it is "other," and all "other" is lumped together as if it is all the same. Given the emphasis on diversity of, say, art forms, or as a result of trade, I would expect there to be more focus on different cultures and races - even if the Early Modern English didn't appreciate the diversity, I'd at least expect them to acknowledge its existence, even to generate different sets of stereotypes for different elasticities, rather than combining African, Muslim, Turk, Indian, and all other forms of other. I think this came about largely due to pure ignorance - most in Early Modern England had no exposure to racial other, and in fact there's evidence that Africans weren't even in England, at least with any significant presence, until 1660, well after the start of the Early Modern period. Nevertheless, there is exposure enough to generate stereotypes about the "moor," especially as sexually licentious, and therefore evil (unless, of course, cause and effect are reversed, and they are evil, and therefore sexually licentious).