- There may also be play with the erotic implications of “country” matters here.
- On the importance of “purity of blood” to Spanish cultural identity in the early
modern period, see Verena Stolcke, “Invaded Women: Gender, Race, and Class in the For-
mation of Colonial Society,” in Hendricks and Parker, eds., 272 – 86. - Compare Barthelemy, Black Face, 104 , who also attaches Eleazar’s “position of le-
gitimacy” to his villainy; and Jones, Othello’s Countrymen, 60 – 68 , who takes that legitimacy
on in order to assess Eleazar’s character rather than to address the politics that play out
through his characterization. - Compare Tokson, who takes the elision of Indian and Moor as a sign of the times,
40 – 41. - Brereton, 154.
- See Tokson, 63 – 64.
- See also Lust’s Dominion 5. 1. 2951 – 52 , 3001 – 2 , and 3051 – 52.
- Compare Barthelemy, Black Face, who reads Eleazar’s attraction to Isabella as a
sign of his insatiable lust. - See my argument in Spectacles of Strangeness, 82 – 108.
- Little, 98 ; see also Iyengar, 36 – 38.
chapter six
- For an overview of the publication history, see Leo Africanus, Description of Africa,
ed. Robert Brown, lii–lxv. - See Oumelbanine Zhiri, “Leo Africanus’s Description of Africa,” in Travel Knowl-
edge: European “Discoveries” in the Early Modern Period, ed. Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna G.
Singh (New York: Palgrave, 2001 ), 258 – 66 , 259. - Richard Hakluyt, “An approbation of the historie ensuing, by meRichard Hakluyt,”
inThe History and Description of Africa, 103. - Pory also includes endorsements by Ramusio, Abraham Ortelius, John Bodin, and
others. See Pory, 103 – 6. - Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2006 ), 4 ; Hall, 29. - See especially Oliver Hennessey, “Talking with the Dead: Leo Africanus, Esoteric
Yeats, and Early Modern Imperialism,” English Literary History 71 ( 2004 ): 1019 – 38. - From Yeats’s letters, quoted in Hennessey, 1031.
- Hennessey, 1035.
- This is the tag Burton popularizes in “ ‘A most wily bird.’ ” See also Hall, 28 – 40 ,
who argues that The Historyexposes a colonial “nervousness about where the boundaries
of difference lie” ( 29 ); and my essay, “Making More of the Moor.” - Burton, “ ‘A most wily bird,’ ” 44 , 46.
- Davis, 18. I use her modernization of the Arabic name hereafter. Her opening
chapter is entitled simply “Introduction: Crossings” ( 3 ). - Davis, 109 , 153.
218 notes to pages 125–140