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1 results

  • Chapter 3 - The Black Legend, Noble Savagery and Indigenous Voice

  • Bridget Orr, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book:
    British Enlightenment Theatre
    Published online:
    21 December 2019
    Print publication:
    02 January 2020, pp 113-153

  • Summary

    English Enlightenment dramas set in the new world frequently depicted European oppression; from John Dennis’s Liberty Asserted (1704) through Aaron Hill’s Alzira (1736) to Arthur Murphy’s Alzuma (1767), playwrights present actions highly critical of European colonialism. These plays put indigenous critiques of European invasion into circulation, drawing on and rearticulating the writing of Incan Garcilaso de la Vega and Adario, Lahontan’s interlocutor in his famous Dialogue. Rather than regarding such discourse as European projection, I argue that the voices of protesting Incas and Mohawks be recognized as “energumen” or discourse of the other, whose critiques of empire, slavery and forced conversion shaped the development of progressive thought in Europe.