Was Jane Austen (1775-1817) Black?

[Egmond Codfried]

The son of James Austen;James Edward wrote a poem in memory of his aunt Jane; "To the memory of Miss jane Austen.' The opening line struck me as a reference to Austens dark skin.

'The purple floweret of the Val[...]'

http://www.google.nl/images?um=1&hl=...&start=60&sa=N

According to Frank Snowden in Blacks in Antiquity (1971) a lover compared his mistress with a purple hyacint.


source: Jane's Fame by Claire Harman

[Lokasenna]

And when Shakespeare wrote "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", he was of course thinking of June 12th, which was rather pleasent really...

[Egmond Codfried]

There are many interesting ways to read Jane Austen! Terry Castle's reading I cannot confirm, as I'm not a lesbian myself, but I have often wondered why Miss Harriet Smith would have to spent the night at Hartfield with Emma, who was lovelyness itself.

NEWS RELEASE

08/16/95

CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (415) 723-2558

Terry Castle stands by Jane Austen review
In the August daze of Britain's "silly season," when the Parliament and courts are in recess and the Royals aren't doing their bit for naughty headlines, the press of Fleet Street annually mount a watch for scandalous stories. Reality is checked at the door.

This summer it was Terry Castle, Stanford professor of English, who landed in the tabloid snares with her review of a newly annotated edition of Jane Austen's letters. When her front-page essay was published in the "London Review of Books" Aug. 3 -- bearing the headline "Was Jane Austen Gay?" -- reporters leapt on Castle's subtle depiction of Austen's relationship with her older sister, Cassandra.

Although the review commented widely on the family gossip and trivia of everyday life that are found in Austen's letters, headline writers zeroed in on a few select phrases. Castle's references to the "passionate nature of the sibling bond [the letters] commemorate," her suggestion that Austen's physical descriptions of women could be read as "a kind of homophilic fascination," and her exploration of the "underlying eros of the sister-sister bond" were seized upon by reporters for the Daily Telegraph, Independent and Observer. Reuters also ran with the story, and soon editors from Time and Newsweek were on the phone to Castle, to ask her if she'd said Jane Austen was a lesbian.

http://news.stanford.edu/pr/95/950816Arc5119.html

http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&so...=&oq=&gs_rfai=

[Egmond Codfried]

For now I consider Emma, Austen’s best novel. A culmination of her art and a summing up of all her ideas already raised and alluded to in her other works. It’s an allegory and refers to Black History. What mistakes were made, how Blacks lost their position, and what the new configuration is.

Miss Jane Fairfax represents the arts and the writers and is like Jane Austen herself, as a writer. But Emma has Jane Austen’s looks, -the true hazel eye-, but Jane Fairfax is a sallow. In this context 'peculiar' means that she had 'classical African' features.

EMMA

Volume III
Chapter XVIII

Emma was delighted, and only wanted him to go on in the same style; but his mind was the next moment in his own concerns and with his own Jane, and his next words were,

"Did you ever see such a skin?--such smoothness! such delicacy!-- and yet without being actually fair.--One cannot call her fair. It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eye-lashes and hair-- a most distinguishing complexion! So peculiarly the lady in it.-- Just colour enough for beauty."

"I have always admired her complexion," replied Emma, archly; "but do not I remember the time when you found fault with her for being so pale?-- When we first began to talk of her.--Have you quite forgotten?"

"Oh! no--what an impudent dog I was!--How could I dare--"

http://www.classicreader.com/book/24/54/

[kiki1982]

The son of James Austen;James Edward wrote a poem in memory of his aunt Jane; "To the memory of Miss jane Austen.' The opening line struck me as a reference to Austens dark skin.

'The purple floweret of the Val[...]'

http://www.google.nl/images?um=1&hl=...&start=60&sa=N

According to Frank Snowden in Blacks in Antiquity (1971) a lover compared his mistress with a purple hyacint.


source: Jane's Fame by Claire Harman

Well naturally, that is quite logic as a hyacinth of old is a symbol for constancy and blue ones in particular for sincerity. Let's hope his lover was constant then... Has nothing to do with being black whatsoever.

As if that is an argument.

[Egmond Codfried]

All scholarly texts about Jane Austen mention the philosophers



Rousseau: described by James Boswell as: ‘a genteel black man in an Armenian coat.’'

He took to this type of great coat to hide a drainage system, catheter, for his urinary complaint.



Voltaire: many images show him as black skinned, though without classical African features. But we do not what his family looked like.



D’Alembert: notice the classical African feautures. This image is whitened.

[MarkBastable]

D’Alembert: notice the classical African feautures. This image is whitened.

What?

[dafydd manton]

And I thought it was a perfectly ordinary periwig!

[OrphanPip]

This is really the greatest thread on Lit Net since Musicology's claim that the Earth was the center of the universe.

[dafydd manton]

Brilliant, isn't it. I'm just waiting till we get to the Black Prince.

[Lokasenna]

Look, look! I've found lots of other pictures that have been 'whitened!'



See, Churchill here displays obvious African characteristics. Sure, he looks white, but that's all part of the conspiracy.



As you can see, they haven't even bothered to properly whiten this picture of Genghis Khan - they're getting sloppy! Notice the broad, African nose as well!



And here as well, look! Machiavelli clearly has the short, dark hair associated with black people! Dark eyes as well! And swarthy!!!



And Walt Disney!!! Look!!! I mean, it's so obvious!!! He could so easily be Nelson Mandela's brother!!!!

And finally:



The greatest cover-up of them all!!!!! Frosty the so-called 'Snowman'!!!!! Obviously a whitened image of Sooty the Coal-thing from Nigerian mythology!!!!! Am I the only one who sees it!?!?!? How can you all be so BLIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


**cough** Sorry, had to get that off my chest...

[Egmond Codfried]

Jane Austen loved the Stuarts, especially the ‘lovely’ Queen Mary of Scots



Anne of Denmark, Queen of England, grandmother of The Black Boy; King Charles II Stuart.
Design for The Masque of Blackness.



The Countess of Lichfield, an illegitimate daughter of the Black Boy, ‘served’ by a Moor who resembles her father in his childhood.



Madame de Kerouaille, a mistress of Charles II Stuart, The Black Boy, with a little Moorress symbolising blue blood, offering pearls, a symbol of purity of blood.

http://forum.www.eenvandaag.nl/viewt...00372&t=121624

[MANICHAEAN]

No Orphan Pip
Dont you remember the "Shakespeare was an Italian" thread?
Good knock about stuff

Mind you, there is always Timoshenko, the Soviet military commander of the Red Army at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Apparent he was not black, but Irish & was originally known as Tim O'Shea.

[Egmond Codfried]

Black or white? Seriously. And how do you determine this?



How does she describe herself? I say she is black, with a black identity; her father is black and she sings soul en r&b, styles associated with black artist. how about her dating practices. anyone?

[dafydd manton]

I think what makes it funnier still is that there is posted above an obvious black woman, titled Anne of Denmark, Queen of England. (The Scots would be annoyed). Queen Consort, actually, yet there are so many top-class oil paintings of her, by Folingsby, Gheeraerts, vanSomer, Oliver and a good few others, all showing a very obviously white woman with strawberry blond hair, yet the contention is that she is of African origin. It wouldn't matter much if she was, but it's so patently obvious........unless all the other paintings are FORGERIES!!!!!