
A History of Curiosity
The Theory of Travel 1550-1800
Justin Stagl(Author)
Harwood-Academic Publishers
1st Edition
Published on 31. January 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
356 pages
978-3-7186-5621-9 (ISBN)
Description
First Published in 2002. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a critical-historical perspective. The three principal methods of research, travel, the survey and the collection of significant objects, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times. The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. He weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasising links between the figures, the philosophies and the literatures of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected. In focussing on the ars apodemica, or art of travelling'', a body of formal instructions on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, the author demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West.
Reviews / Votes
'...Stagl's explorations of late eighteenth-century debates over the nature of World History are also enlightening, as they reveal the origins of Volkskunde and ethnologie - categories that were to dominate travel and scholarship for the next two centries to the present.''This strikingly original, painstakingly researched...book exhibits all the virtues and a few of the weaknesses of long-sustained maverick devotion. Though not exclusively focused upon travel, it will remain a pillar of scholarship in travel history...For anyone interested in the history of travel cultures this book - with its rich references to primary manuscript sources and German historical scholarship not available in English - will prove indispensable.'
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chur
Switzerland
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 174 mm
Weight
816 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-7186-5621-9 (9783718656219)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Additional editions

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07/2016
1st Edition
Routledge
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E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
Routledge
€68.49
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E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
Routledge
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Person
Justin Stagl, born 1941, in Klagenfurt, Austria, presently holds the Chair in Sociology of Culture at the University of Saltzburg, Austria. Main fields of interest: theory and history of the social sciences, sociology of culture.
Content
The methodizing of travel in the 16th century - a tale of three cities; rerum memoria - early modern enquiries and documentation centres; imagines mundi - allegories of the continents in the Baroque and the Enlightenment; the man who called himself George Psalmanaazar or the problems of the authenticity of ethnographic description; Josephinism and social research - the patriotic traveller of Count Leopold Berchtold; August Ludwig Schlozer and the study of mankind according to peoples; from the autonomous to the heteronomous traveller - Volney's reform of travel instruction and the French Revolution.