God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945We are obsessed with 'barbarians'. They are the 'not us', who don't speak our language, or 'any language', whom we depise, fear, invade and kill; for whom we feel compassion, or admiration, and an intense sexual interest; whose innocence or vigour we aspire to, and who have an extraordinaryinfluence on the comportment, and even modes of dress, of our civilised metropolitan lives; whom we often outdo in the barbarism we impute to them; and whose suspected resemblance to us haunts our introspections and imaginings. They come in two overlapping categories, ethnic others and home-grownpariahs: conquered infidels and savages, the Irish, the poor, the Jews. This book looks afresh at how we have confronted the idea of 'barbarism', in ourselves and others, from 1492 to 1945, through the voices of many writers, chiefly Montaigne, Swift and, to a lesser extent, Shaw. |
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Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Indians and Irish from Montaigne to Swift | 17 |
Unspeaking the Unspeakable | 24 |
Us se sont entremangez | 33 |
Good and Bad Indians | 42 |
Utopians Tupinamba Houyhnhnms Yahoos | 55 |
Gunpowder Magic | 62 |
Fynes Moryson and the Intelligencer | 69 |
Killing the Poor An AngloIrish Theme? | 183 |
The Worst of our crimes is poverty | 191 |
Dreams of the Beggar as Nobleman | 203 |
Beggars and Hottentots or Exterminate all the Brutes | 209 |
Badging Branding and Castration | 224 |
The Beggarly Kingdom from Spenser to Joyce | 232 |
The Whole People | 237 |
A Flayed Woman and Brother Footman going to be Hanged | 245 |
Indians Irish and the Scythian Myth | 79 |
The Savage with Hanging Breasts Gulliver Female Yahoos and Racism | 92 |
The Savage with Hanging Breasts | 98 |
Hottentots and Irish | 108 |
The Hottentot Venus | 113 |
The Bum Shop | 130 |
Matings with Strangers | 138 |
Going Native | 151 |
Apes and Angels | 162 |
Postcolonial Couplings | 175 |
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Common terms and phrases
African America Amerindian analogy animals apes Baartman barbaric beggars Blainville Breton Brobdingnag cannibal cannibales Casas castration century Chapter cited conquest context Cuvier discourse eating Encyclopédie English episode Essais ethnic European evidence example extermination fact fantasy female fiction French Fynes Moryson Genesis Giving Badges groups Gulliver Gulliver's Travels hanging breasts Histoire mémorable History Hottentot Venus Houyhnhnmland Houyhnhnms human idea Indians Ireland Irish J. M. Coetzee Jews Jonathan Swift killing later Léry Lestringant Letters literal London misogyny Modest Proposal monkeys Montaigne Montaigne's Moryson Myth Nations natives Nazi Negro Noah Noah's Oxford Paris passage passim Ploss poem poor punishment race racial racism reported resemblance Sade Sancerre satirical savage savage Nations says Scythians seems sense sexual Shaw Shaw's social species steatopygic story suggested Swift Swiftian Thevet tion trans Tupinamba Vespucci victims Voyage Wilde Wilde's woman women World writings Yahoos York