Abstract
Opening with The Red-Haired Woman (2016) by Nobel-prize winner and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, the exegesis flashes back to the tenth-century Persian epic Shahnameh by Ferdowsi that provided the basis of Pamuk’s novel. The chapter then studies men and women of red hair in the ancient poem of India, the Mahābhārata; followed by the “red-haired Fan” in China’s second-century Shuowen Jiezi. The reaction to redheads throughout the history of countries in the East and Africa are recorded and explored.
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Notes
- 1.
This was the fifteenth episode of the third season of Star Trek and was titled “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” written by Oliver Crawford, based on a story written by Gene L. Coon. It aired first on January 10, 1969.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Quoted in Forth (196) from Van Gulik (1967, 27–28).
- 5.
Quoted in Forth (229–30) from Heuvelmans (2014 [1995], 509–13).
- 6.
Quoted in Tarn (2010, 110) from Pliny’s Naturalis Historia (6:88).
- 7.
See chapter 7 in Le Coq (1929 [1926]).
- 8.
See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians. They first appear in Le Coq’s book.
- 9.
Mr. Boffin recalls that Mr. Harmon, now deceased, was “an awful Tartar (bk. 1, ch. 8; 93–94). Mr. Tremlow refers to Lord Snigsworth as “that magnificent Tartar” (bk. 2, ch. 16; 401). Then Bella, now Mrs. Rokesmith, is reading The Complete British Family Housewife as she navigates the mysterious world of domesticity. Apparently the book directed the user to “take a salamander,” and Bella likens this to a “general should command a private to catch a Tartar,” as if such a thing were “entirely unattainable” (bk. 4, ch. 6; 662).
- 10.
Quoted in Skinner 85 from Owen 2003, 7–10.
- 11.
Skinner 85 and 85n119 with a reference to Tsiafakis 2000, 372n38.
- 12.
Thetis, the mother of Achilles, made her son, Achilles, immortal by dipping him into main river of Hades, Styx. Unfortunately, she forgot that by holding him by one of his heels, that heel would make him vulnerable to death.
- 13.
Modeled on the Persian genre of mirrors of princes, written to instruct rulers how to rule and behave. It was a popular genre during the Early Middle Ages through the Renaissance and was part of the larger speculum or mirror literature genre, with the most famous being Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513). The Taj is considered a pre-Islamic Persian text.
- 14.
Quoted in Ng (172) from Copland (1528, 378).
- 15.
- 16.
Quoted in Peng (20) from Yingsheng (1995, 277).
- 17.
Quoted in Peng (21) from Peyrefitte (587).
- 18.
- 19.
Quoted in Thoms (1836, 402) from Matheson (15 and 17).
- 20.
Quoted in Miller 82 from Byrne (1996, 41).
- 21.
The executive director was Atsuko Tatsumi, quoted in Pollack (1996).
- 22.
Quoted in Kuchikomi (2019) by Shuko Sakata, manager of Triumph International Japan.
- 23.
Quoted in Seth (218) from Baker (1990, 68).
- 24.
Kromberg’s information comes from Karl Pearson’s research from 1911 to 1913, published in his Monograph of Albinism in Man (London: Dulau, 1913).
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Ayres, B. (2021). The Other Redheads Throughout Asia and Africa. In: A Vindication of the Redhead. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83515-6_8
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