EMIGF IV: Myriam Iuorio & Freya Abbas

Myriam Iuorio, PhD Candidate at the IHPST, University of Toronto

“Deformed, beastly, ugly”: Portraying the African Body in Italian Missionary Narratives from West Central Africa

This paper examines how ideas of bodily impairments, physical differences and “monstrosity” shaped the encounter between Italian Capuchin missionaries and West Central African people in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Using a disability studies lens, the presentation explores how Renaissance ideas of bodily differences were reflected by Italian missionary accounts describing the Kingdom of Kongo and its neighboring countries. While the Kingdom of Kongo had already converted to Christianity by the time the first Italian missionaries arrived at the behest of Congolese rulers, the Capuchins feared
that their Christianizing efforts could be undermined by the spreading of “satanic” or “pagan” practices among the local population. These worries percolated in comments about African people’s ability to receive the salvific message, which conflated religious prejudices with ideas of “monstrosity”, describing them as less than human, lacking reason and being characterized by bodily imperfections, deformity and ugliness.

A closer investigation of Italian missionary narratives illuminates the role of the Black body as a site of speculation about a non-European identity and the metaphorical use of bodily differences and disabilities to convey the “alterity” of African people, thus reassessing the role of missionary accounts in European processes of race-making.

Freya Abbas, Master’s in English, University of Toronto

“In Being Conquered, he Conquered all of Europe” : Anthropomorphized Tobacco in Tomkis’s Lingua (1607)

Late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England saw a rise in debates over the morality of the tobacco trade. Anti-tobacconists held the view that seemingly harmless recreational activities could result in moral darkening and the dysregulation of emotions. Moral panic over tobacco was accompanied by xenophobia, as the inhalation of smoke was seen as the incorporation of an alien substance from the New World into one’s body. The academic drama Lingua (1607) by Thomas Tomkis portrays Tobacco as a “mighty Emperour” and “King of Trinidado,” while at the same time being a servant to the anthropomorphized olfactory sense. Lingua was written in English rather than Latin, and the audience would have contained women and laypeople even though it was performed at Cambridge. Yet the misogynistic and elitist humour of the play reinforces the exclusive nature of the academic community. The portrayal of Tobacco suggests fear of the foreign was prominent among scholars due to the association of the Other with sensory pleasures that could “conquer” one’s rationality. Tobacco could also alter the humoral composition of the body to become more similar to those who are excluded from the academy.