The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era by David M. Whitford

Author:David M. Whitford [Whitford, David M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351891820
Google: fEErDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05T16:13:08+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

This Heavy Curse: Popularizing the Curse of Ham

Witness the irreverent son

Of him who built the ark, who for the

shame Done to his father, heard this heavy curse,

Servant of Servants, on his vicious race.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

The loss of Canaan from the general narrative of Genesis 9 significantly enhanced the already malleable nature of the chapter. Over the late sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century, Noah and Ham would be employed by a wide variety of authors seeking to exploit the text for a number of different ends. As these authors manipulated the text one can begin to discern a pattern, a Curse Matrix, wherein each new contrivance built on the previous configuration and added to it. At the close of the seventeenth century, Ham’s “heavy curse” will evoke a single, and by now racist, image of a black-skinned, hypersexualized, pagan slave. This Matrix was then used for more than a century to repel any attack against the practice of African slavery in the English colonies of America.

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