Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology

ISBN-13: 9781138382367 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 444 str.

JOAN-PAU RUBI S

Opis

Joan-Pau Rubiés brings together here eleven studies published between 1991 and 2005 that illuminate the impact of travel writing on the transformation of early modern European culture towards the concerns of the Enlightenment. The studies include both general discussions and the contextual analysis of particular texts and debates, ranging form the earliest ethnographies produced by merchants travelling to Asia with Vasco da Gama, to the writings of Jesuit missionaries researching idolatry in India and China, or thinkers like Hugo Grotius seeking to explain the origin of the American Indians.

Spis treści

Contents: Introduction; Part I Historical Perspectives: Travel writing as a genre: facts, fictions and the invention of a scientific discourse in early modern Europe; New worlds and renaissance ethnology; Instructions for travellers: teaching the eye to see; Travel writing and ethnography. Part II Texts and Debates: Giovanni di Buonagrazia's letter to his father concerning his participation in the 2nd expedition of Vasco da Gama (1502-1503); The oriental voices of Mendes Pinto, or the traveller as ethnologist in Portuguese India; Futility in the New World: narratives of travel in 16th-century America; The Jesuit discovery of Hinduism: Antonio Rubino's account of the history and religion of Vijayanagara (1608); The concept of cultural dialogue and the Jesuit method of accommodation: between idolatry and civilisation; The Spanish contribution to the ethnology of Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries; Hugo Grotius's dissertation on the origin of the American peoples and the use of comparative methods; Addenda and corrigenda; Index.

O autorze

Dr Joan-Pau Rubiés is Reader in International History at the London School of Economics, UK.