Introduction: women, race, and Renaissance texts

In 1507 and again in 1508 the court of King James IV of Scotland mounted a tournament of the wild knight and the black lady. Surviving accounts of these splendid occasions constitute a rare record of the representation of African women in the early modern period. We know that the king was outfitted in black and gold, from his doublet and hood to the weapons he carried and possibly later presented as prizes. His attendants may even have worn silver and gilt horns as part of their costumes, and ridden contraptions rigged up to look like wild beasts. Mounted during a period when James was attempting to pacify the Gaelic Scots of the Highlands, the tournament of the wild knight performed for court consumption a kind of flirtation with the cultural notion of wildness. As the wild knight who wins the black lady and then reveals himself as the king, James symbolically crosses out of the self-consciously civilized and magnificent precincts of his court at Edinburgh, secures a prize from outside the borders of that court through at least partial symbolic appropriation of the tools of the unknown, and then returns home to the admiration and acclamation of his subjects. This notion of voyaging outward and then returning with knowledge of and booty from the outside gains significance from the position of the black lady as the prize to be won.