Agents Without Empire by Antnia Szabari - 9781531506667

Agents Without EmpireMobility and Race-Making in Sixteenth-Century France\nAuthor(s): Antnia Szabari\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Fordham University Press, United States\nImprint: Fordham University Press\nISBN-13: 9781531506667, 978-1531506667\nSynopsis\nIt is well known that Renaissance culture gave an empowering role to the individual and thereby to agency. But how does race factor into this culture of empowerment? Canonical French authors like Rabelais and Montaigne have been celebrated for their flexible worldviews and interest in the difference of non-French cultures both inside and outside of Europe. As a result, this period in French cultural history has come to be valued as an exceptional era of cultural opening toward others. Agents without Empire shows that such a celebration is, at the very least, problematic. \n Szabari argues that before the rise of the French colonial empire, medieval categories of race based on the redemption story were recast through accounts of the.