Curiosity : a cultural history of early modern inquiry / Barbara M. Benedict.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benedict, Barbara M.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Curiosities and wonders in literature.

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Literature and science--Great Britain--History.

Literature and science.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History.

Literature and society.

Collectors and collecting in literature.

Curiosity in literature.

Monsters in literature.

Museums in literature.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

ix, 321 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2001]

Summary:

In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition."Benedict assembles her own gorgeous literary curiosity cabinet crammed with excerpts from novels, poems, journalism, travel narratives, trial transcripts and pornography. . . . The book is teeming with big questions and fine distinctions."--Ian Sansom, The Guardian"Pithy and wide-ranging. . . . This study provides a fresh new lens through which to reinvestigate the whole of early modern English literature."--Library Journal

Contents:

Introduction: Inspecting and Spectating: Monsters, Rarities, and Investigators 1

Chapter 1 Regulating Curiosity 25

The Discipline of Fraud 28

Curiosity as Second Sight 52

Chapter 2 Consuming Curiosity 71

Monstrous Modernity and Curious Art 74

The Curious Eye 92

Chapter 3 From the Curious to the Curio 118

The Inquiry of Eve 121

Women as Closeted Curiosities 134

Chapter 4 Connoisseurship in the Mental Cabinet 158

Curiosities of Artful Nature 164

Collecting Culture in the Printed Museum 180

Chapter 5 Performing Curiosity 202

The Curious Control of Nature 206

Curiosity as Social Reform 228

Conclusion: Transgression and Ambition 245.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-311) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0226042634

OCLC:

44518037