Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel-Writing, 1770-1840 by Nigel Leask, Paperback, 9780199269303 | Buy online at The Nile
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Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel-Writing, 1770-1840

'From an Antique Land'

Author: Nigel Leask  

This is a study of the Romantic obsession with the 'antique lands' of Ethiopia, Egypt, India, and Mexico. It focuses on the unstable discourse of 'curiosity' to offer an important reformulation of the relations between literature, aesthetics, and colonialism in the period.

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Summary

This is a study of the Romantic obsession with the 'antique lands' of Ethiopia, Egypt, India, and Mexico. It focuses on the unstable discourse of 'curiosity' to offer an important reformulation of the relations between literature, aesthetics, and colonialism in the period.

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Description

The decades between 1770 and 1840 are rich in exotic accounts of the ruin-strewn landscapes of Ethiopia, Egypt, India, and Mexico. Yet it is a field which has been neglected by scholars and which - unjustifiably - remains outside the literary canon. In this pioneering book, Nigel Leask studies the Romantic obsession with these 'antique lands', drawing generously on a wide range of eighteenth and nineteenth-century travel books, as well as on recent scholarship inliterature, history, geography, and anthropology. Viewing the texts primarily as literary works rather than 'transparent' adventure stories or documentary sources, he sets out to challenge the tendencyin modern academic work to overemphasize the authoritative character of colonial discourse. Instead, he addresses the relationship between narrative, aesthetics, and colonialism through the unstable discourse of antiquarianism, exploring the effects of problems of credit worthiness, and the nebulous epistemological claims of 'curiosity' (a leitmotif of the accounts studied here), on the contemporary status of travel writing.Attentive to the often divergent idioms of eliteand popular exoticism, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing plots the transformation of the travelogue through the period, as the baroque particularism of curiosity was challenged bypicturesque aesthetics, systematic 'geographical narrative', and the emergence of a 'transcendental self' axiomatic to Romantic culture. In so doing it offers an important reformulation of the relations between literature, aesthetics, and empire in the late Enlightenment and Romantic periods.

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Critic Reviews

“"This is a timely, engrossing, and important revisionary account of Romantic period travel writing.... Leask's approach is characterized by scrupulous attention to detail, ingenuity, and subtlety."--Byron Journal "Wide-ranging and discriminating.... Leask's book is refreshingly comparative, and boldly breaks new ground.... He unsettles a number of orthodoxies which have cramped our understanding of what happened when Western Europeans travelled outside the boundaries of their own civilization."--TimesLiterary Supplement "Addresses the intersections between space and time more fully than any other recent book on Romantic travel.... Leask's detailed study contributes valuably to the body of criticism on Romantic travel literature and, more broadly, to criticism on Romantic conceptions of place and space."--EuropeanRomantic Review "Wide-ranging and discriminating.... Leask's book is refreshingly comparative, and boldly breaks new ground.... He unsettles a number of orthodoxies which have cramped our understanding of what happened when Western Europeans travelled outside the boundaries of their own civilization."--TimesLiterary Supplement "This is a timely, engrossing, and important revisionary account of Romantic period travel writing.... Leask's approach is characterized by scrupulous attention to detail, ingenuity, and subtlety."--Byron Journal "Addresses the intersections between space and time more fully than any other recent book on Romantic travel.... Leask's detailed study contributes valuably to the body of criticism on Romantic travel literature and, more broadly, to criticism on Romantic conceptions of place and space."--EuropeanRomantic Review UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Review from hardback edition... addresses the intersections between space and time more fully than any other recent book on Romantic travel ... Leask's detailed study contributes valuably to the body of criticism on Romantic travel literature and, more broadly, to criticism on Romantic conceptions of place and space."--European Romantic Review UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Review from previous editionWide-ranging and discriminating . . . Leask's book is refreshingly comparative, and boldly breaks new ground . . . He unsettles a number of orthodoxies which have cramped our understanding of what happened when Western Europeans travelled outside the boundaries of their own civilization."--David Womersley, Times Literary Supplement UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Leask ranges more widely than any of his predecessors . . . Leask admirably rises to the challenge by widening his scrutiny beyond works composed in English . . . an admirable and original synthesis of much rarely explored travel material."--Studies in Travel Writing "The analysis Leask gives of the problems at the heart of travel writing should prove of interest to students of the early novel and of nascent ethnography and anthropology.Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writingis scholarship of high caliber." --Eighteenth-Century Life”

Review from hardback edition... addresses the intersections between space and time more fully than any other recent book on Romantic travel ... Leask's detailed study contributes valuably to the body of criticism on Romantic travel literature and, more broadly, to criticism on Romantic conceptions of place and space.'European Romantic ReviewReview from previous edition Wide-ranging and discriminating . . . Leask's book is refreshingly comparative, and boldly breaks new ground . . . He unsettles a number of orthodoxies which have cramped our understanding of what happened when Western Europeans travelled outside the boundaries of their own civilization.'David Womersley, Times Literary Supplement`Leask ranges more widely than any of his predecessors . . . Leask admirably rises to the challenge by widening his scrutiny beyond works composed in English . . . an admirable and original synthesis of much rarely explored travel material.'Studies in Travel Writing

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About the Author

Nigel Leask is at Lecturer in the English Faculty, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.

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More on this Book

The decades between 1770 and 1840 are rich in exotic accounts of the ruin-strewn landscapes of Ethiopia, Egypt, India, and Mexico. Yet it is a field which has been neglected by scholars and which - unjustifiably - remains outside the literary canon. In this pioneering book, Nigel Leask studies the Romantic obsession with these 'antique lands', drawing generously on a wide range of eighteenth and nineteenth-century travel books, as well as on recent scholarship in literature, history, geography, and anthropology. Viewing the texts primarily as literary works rather than 'transparent' adventure stories or documentary sources, he sets out to challenge the tendency in modern academic work to overemphasize the authoritative character of colonial discourse. Instead, he addresses the relationship between narrative, aesthetics, and colonialism through the unstable discourse of antiquarianism, exploring the effects of problems of credit worthiness, and the nebulous epistemological claims of 'curiosity' (a leitmotif of the accounts studied here), on the contemporary status of travel writing.Attentive to the often divergent idioms of elite and popular exoticism, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing plots the transformation of the travelogue through the period, as the baroque particularism of curiosity was challenged by picturesque aesthetics, systematic 'geographical narrative', and the emergence of a 'transcendental self' axiomatic to Romantic culture. In so doing it offers an important reformulation of the relations between literature, aesthetics, and empire in the late Enlightenment and Romantic periods.

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Product Details

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Published
5th February 2004
Pages
352
ISBN
9780199269303

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