Curiosity and the aesthetics of travel-writing, 1770-1840 : from an antique land / Nigel Leask.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leask, Nigel, author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travel writing--History--18th century.

Travel writing.

Travel writing--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 338 p. ) ill. ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2023.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Drawing on original texts and modern scholarship in literature, history and anthropology, this text focuses on the unstable discourse of curiosity to offer a reformulation of the relations between literature, aesthetics and colonialism in the period.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction: Practices and Narratives of Romantic Travel

1. Cycles of Accumulation, Aesthetics of Curiosity, and Temporal Exchange

Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Discourse

Temporalization and the Comparison of Cultures

2. Curious Narrative and the Problem of Credit: James Bruce's Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile

Curiosity and the Dynamics of Scale

Publication

Scientific Credit

At the Nile Source

The Medici Venus and 'Curious' Masculinity

The Raw and the Cooked

Coda

3. 'Young Memnon' and Romantic Egyptomania

Part 1: Shelley's 'Ozymandias' and Napoleon's Savants

Shelley and the Savants: Volney, Denon, and the Description de l'Egypte

Part 2: Belzoni, Burckhardt, and the 'Rape of the Nile'

4. Indian Travel Writing and the Imperial Picturesque

Modalities of Indian Travel Writing

The Picturesque Modality

The Peer and the 'Bishop Sahib': The Indian Travel Narratives of Lord Valentia and Reginald Heber

Reginald Heber's Narrative of a Journey Through the Upper Provinces of India

The Radical Anti-Picturesque: James Mill and Victor Jacquemont

5. Domesticating Distance: Three Women Travel Writers in British India

Maria Graham: The Oriental Traveller as Female Moralist

Emma Roberts, Oriental Tourism, and the 'Moonlight Picturesque'

'A Pencil instead of a Gun': Fanny Parks and Curiosity

Colonial Politics and Feminism

Curiosity, Collecting, Narrating

6. Alexander von Humboldt and the Romantic Imagination of America: The Impossibility of Personal Narrative

The Physical Portrait of the Tropics and Aspects of Nature

Humboldt and the Dispute of the New World

The Political Essay on New Spain

Conclusion: William Bullock's Mexico and the Reassertion of 'Popular Curiosity'

Bibliography.

Index.

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2002.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Derived record based on print version record and publisher information.

ISBN:

1-383-03846-5

1-280-44669-2

0-19-155439-1

OCLC:

1027156473