A History of Curiosity : The Theory of Travel 1550-1800

ISBN-13: 9783718656219 / Angielski / Miękka / 1995 / 352 str.

Justin Stagl;Stagle

Opis

The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. Stagl weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasizing links between the figures, the philosophies and the literature of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected.
In focusing on the "ars apodemica," or "art of travelling," a body of formal instruction on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, Stagl demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West.
"A History of Curiosity" examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a critical-historical perspective. The two principal methods of research, travel and the questionnaire, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times.

Recenzje

'...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.'

Spis treści

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.

O autorze

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.