Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In Masks: Blackness, Race and the Imagination, Adam Lively offers an exploration of how the concept of blackness has evolved in Western thought and literature, and how changing notions of racial identity helped to shape modern consciousness." "Lively traces ideas of racial difference to their earliest expression in European culture, at the time of the Europeans' first encounters with African and American peoples, and follows these ideas to their current incarnations in contemporary America and the Caribbean. He explores the various and sometimes reversible ways in which racial identity has functioned as a mask: the pure white soul inside the black person; the primitive, dark soul ready to break through the civilized white veneer; the "invisible" black whose identity consists of projected white fears. Examining a wide range of works over the last three centuries. Lively explores the fluidity of racial identity."--Jacket

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