{"title":"\"Soot in one's soup\": Transitory Blackness in British Romantic Chimney-Sweep Literature","authors":"J. Goheen","doi":"10.1353/srm.2022.0005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The seemingly benevolent chimney-sweep literature written between 1785–1825 reflects the antiblack attitudes that permeated the Romantic period. Blackness in this body of literature suggests that whether sweeps are characterized as benign or threatening, they were reviled by reformers and protectors for being Black. Sweeps, this essay argues, became canvases for benevolent activists on which to project their racist anxieties about the transitory nature of Blackness. Such readings further enable us to see that fears of Blackness instantiate Britain's anxieties about its failure to produce a material atmosphere that secured neat distinctions between white and black bodies.","PeriodicalId":44848,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN ROMANTICISM","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2022.0005","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:The seemingly benevolent chimney-sweep literature written between 1785–1825 reflects the antiblack attitudes that permeated the Romantic period. Blackness in this body of literature suggests that whether sweeps are characterized as benign or threatening, they were reviled by reformers and protectors for being Black. Sweeps, this essay argues, became canvases for benevolent activists on which to project their racist anxieties about the transitory nature of Blackness. Such readings further enable us to see that fears of Blackness instantiate Britain's anxieties about its failure to produce a material atmosphere that secured neat distinctions between white and black bodies.
期刊介绍:
Studies in Romanticism was founded in 1961 by David Bonnell Green at a time when it was still possible to wonder whether "romanticism" was a term worth theorizing (as Morse Peckham deliberated in the first essay of the first number). It seemed that it was, and, ever since, SiR (as it is known to abbreviation) has flourished under a fine succession of editors: Edwin Silverman, W. H. Stevenson, Charles Stone III, Michael Cooke, Morton Palet, and (continuously since 1978) David Wagenknecht. There are other fine journals in which scholars of romanticism feel it necessary to appear - and over the years there are a few important scholars of the period who have not been represented there by important work.