...no clear definition, with many opposing religions, philosophies and sciences. By the time of the Renaissance, humanists had placed themselves in the center of their attention, to find what our needs are outside the theological perspective. Throughout this period, we began able to freely explore human dynamics in the arts and sciences. Writers like William Shakespeare emerged through and philosophers such as Thomas More and Michel de Montaigne. According to these authors, power, relationships, and death represent the human condition. During the Renaissance, most of Europe could be described as the modern civilized world where a political law is in place for everyone. The entanglement of power in humans is important to keep...
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...Bibliography I. Race and Gender A. Ibn Battuta’s Mali (1352) B. Michel Montaigne’s Of Cannibals (1575) C. Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz’s The Poet’s Answer to the Most Illustrious Sor Filotea De La Cruz (1691) D. Lady Mary Montague’s The Turkish Embassy Letters E. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Chapter 13 from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman II. Explanation A. The readings listed above are all pertinent to either race or gender. What sets these apart, though, is the overall tone of the authors. All of these readings are observations. Judgment is passed at times, but that is primarily due to the differences between the author’s own life and the way of life that he or she is describing. Race and gender is the first category of readings because it cannot be changed or altered, it simply is what it is. Ibn Battuta’s Mali best encompasses this category because of the genuine interest he had in his observations. He describes things about the people of Mali that are praiseworthy as well as things that he dislikes about their way of life, giving the entire work brilliant objectivity. Something that he praises about the culture is “the small number of acts of injustice that take place there [in Mali], for of all people, the Negroes abhor it [injustice] the most.” He also appreciates the religious customs of the culture and identifies with the importance of religion, but admires the dedication the people of Mali have to their God. Something that Battuta...
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...Splenetic Ogres and Heroic Cannibals in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) Ahsan Chowdhury University of Alberta I. Cannibalism: Ethnic Defamation or a Trope of Liberation? In A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to eir Parents and Country, and for Making em Beneficial to the Public () Swift exploits the age-old discourse of ethnic defamation against the Irish that had legitimated the English colonization of Ireland for centuries. One of the most damning elements in Swift’s use of this discourse is that of cannibalism. e discourse of ethnic defamation arose out of the Norman conquest of Ireland in the twelfth century. Clare Carroll points out that “the colonization of the Americas and the reformation as events … generated new discourses inflecting the inherited discourse of barbarism” in early-modern English writing about Ireland (). Narratives of native cannibalism were an indispensable part of these new discourses and practices. For the English authors as well as their continental counterparts, the cannibalistic other of the New World became a yardstick by which to measure the threat posed by internal enemies, be it the indigenous Irish, the French Catholics, or the Moorish inhabitants of Spain.¹ us, it was against the backdrop of the reforma Carroll demonstrates that while continental authors like Bartolomé de Las Casas and Jean de Léry could treat the Amerindians and their cannibalistic practices ...
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