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This seminar will center on one of the most mysterious figures of American culture: the renegade. A renegade is equal and contrary to a convert: while ‘convert’ is a neutral or positive term indicating someone who entered a new faith, the renegade has converted out of the purported ‘true’ faith (or culture, or country, or race) and into another. These figures mostly lived at the margin of Atlantic texts of piracy, sea travel, and captivity, but some of them made it to the center of the stage, becoming the heroes – and the villains – of their own story. Surprisingly, however, the term “renegade” acquires new meanings over time, until it becomes identical with a heroic revolutionary, a freedom fighter, a charming outcast. This ambiguity has informed current understandings of both “villains” and “heroes” in American culture – two figures who often end up being mysteriously entangled. Ultimately, learning more about the renegades of early America will enable better readings, and a more profound understanding, of American villains. In this seminar we will encounter a series of American renegades from the 17th century up until the end of the 19th century. We will also look specifically at two plays, Philipp Massinger’s The Renegado (UK, 1630) and Susanna Rowson’s Slaves in Algiers (US, 1794). We will read these texts (sometimes aloud) with an eye out for racial and religious transfers, textual and cultural ambiguities, the treacherous mystique of early transatlantic travel, and early representations of Islam in Anglophone literature. |
