The Life of Johnson

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Boswell, James “The Life of Johnson”, RelRace, item créé par Julie Chevallier, dernier accès le 5 Dec. 2024.
Contributeur Julie Chevallier
Sujet L’origine de la couleur de peau noire
Description James Boswell rapporte les propos de Johnson qui étudie l’origine de la couleur de peau noire et propose trois explications : la malédiction de Cham, le climat avec la chaleur du soleil et la création de deux êtres à l’origine, un de couleur blanche, l’autre de couleur noire.
Auteur James Boswell
Date 1763
Éditeur Oxford : G. Birkbeck Hill, vol. 1, p. 401 [1934]
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Johnson and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute concerning the cause of some part of mankind being black. ‘Why, Sir, (said Johnson), it has been accounted for in three ways : either by supposing that they are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed ; or that GOD at first created two kinds of men, one black and another white ; or that by the heat of the sun the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue.’ What the Irishman said is totally obliterated from my mind ; but I remember that he became very warm and intemperate in his expressions ; upon which Johnson rose, and quietly walked away. When he had retired, his antagonist took his revenge, as he thought, by saying, ‘He has a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity, unworthy of a man of genius