Le Morte D'Arthur (compiled from common stories by professional insurrectionist and criminal superstar Thomas Malory from a dusty prison cell) is one of my favorite books. I do not recall it once even acknowledging the existence of non-White persons.
It treated men from anywhere outside of the Arthursphere as simultaneously alien and European. The narrative treated knights as being in strange and exotic situations any time they spoke to another White man from even a very slightly non-English or French setting. Rather than tell English lore about Africans who are not English, the narrative prefers to create a new, totally fictional kingdom of White europeans whose foremost traits are how strange and exotic they as White men are to the other Also White men.
The word "black" in the book is synonymous with "bad", "dark", or "evil" and is only used in this way except perhaps to describe the physical color of an object. The word fair is used often, and for its every meaning; "light" and "dainty" as well as "equal" and "just", and also is used directly to describe the skin of many women, in order to suggest to the reader that the woman is desirable.
After reading 300 pages of Mallory, if you came across the phrase "black man" (which you won't) you would assume it was a person with white skin who was involved in very bad things and possibly evil magic, i.e. a moral foil to actual Merlin who exists in the Euro cultural miasma.
The word black in the sense of sub-Saharan African can't be that old. People had all kinds of names for such limited contacts as they made like Nubian and Ethiopian. Though they were keenly aware of racial differences, conflating all Africans together doesn't make much sense until the context of slavery in the New World. Then, black vs white was keenly important, and the African's former tribe didn't matter much.
This. This is the correct take. There was no "Black men" in Malory's time, in that sense...
Also, at some point, "Africa" and "Libya" kind of swapped meanings... Not sure when that happened, but it may have been after Malory's time, too, lol...
Le Morte D'Arthur (compiled from common stories by professional insurrectionist and criminal superstar Thomas Malory from a dusty prison cell) is one of my favorite books. I do not recall it once even acknowledging the existence of non-White persons.
It treated men from anywhere outside of the Arthursphere as simultaneously alien and European. The narrative treated knights as being in strange and exotic situations any time they spoke to another White man from even a very slightly non-English or French setting. Rather than tell English lore about Africans who are not English, the narrative prefers to create a new, totally fictional kingdom of White europeans whose foremost traits are how strange and exotic they as White men are to the other Also White men.
The word "black" in the book is synonymous with "bad", "dark", or "evil" and is only used in this way except perhaps to describe the physical color of an object. The word fair is used often, and for its every meaning; "light" and "dainty" as well as "equal" and "just", and also is used directly to describe the skin of many women, in order to suggest to the reader that the woman is desirable.
After reading 300 pages of Mallory, if you came across the phrase "black man" (which you won't) you would assume it was a person with white skin who was involved in very bad things and possibly evil magic, i.e. a moral foil to actual Merlin who exists in the Euro cultural miasma.
The word black in the sense of sub-Saharan African can't be that old. People had all kinds of names for such limited contacts as they made like Nubian and Ethiopian. Though they were keenly aware of racial differences, conflating all Africans together doesn't make much sense until the context of slavery in the New World. Then, black vs white was keenly important, and the African's former tribe didn't matter much.
This. This is the correct take. There was no "Black men" in Malory's time, in that sense...
Also, at some point, "Africa" and "Libya" kind of swapped meanings... Not sure when that happened, but it may have been after Malory's time, too, lol...
Which makes it extra confusing.
See: https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/l/Libya.htm#:~:text=In%20Greek%20this%20became%20%22Libya,the%20entire%20continent%20of%20Africa.