Curiosity
A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry
Barbara M. Benedict(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 15. March 2001
Book
Hardback
332 pages
978-0-226-04263-3 (ISBN)
Description
The author offers a cultural history of curiosity as it shaped English writing from the late-17th to early 19th centuries. Drawing on novels, ghost stories and travel narratives, the author argues that writers depicted curiosity as an unsavoury form of cultural ambition.
Reviews / Votes
"Robinson Crusoe told us that his head was always filled 'with rembling Thoughts.' That is how he got into such trouble, but it is also the way he survived. Rambling thoughts, as Benedict shows in this exuberant study, were at the center of English literary and cultural experience from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Transgressive, uncontrollable, hopelessly vulgar and at the same time exalted and ennobling, the passion of curiosity was the key that unlocked the sensibility of modernity in its great formative age." - Stephen Greenblatt, author of Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World "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 JournalMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
20 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 161 mm
Weight
580 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-04263-3 (9780226042633)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Barbara M. Benedict is professor in and chair of the English department at Trinity College, Connecticut. She is the author of Making the Modern Reader and Framing Feeling.