Virtual Voyages
Virtual Voyages

Author: Paul Longley Arthur

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2011-10

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 9781843313182

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'Virtual Voyages' is a fascinating account of the European discovery of the elusive 'great south land' told through the literature of 'imaginary voyages'. Written at the height of the era of European maritime exploration, these bizarre and captivating tales, with their wildly imaginative visions of antipodean inversion and strangeness, reveal a hidden history of attitudes to colonization. By exposing the relationship between myth and reality in the antipodes, this book casts new light on the power of fiction to influence history. In the post-colonial studies field, books about travel writing and empire have tended to focus on the high period of nineteenth-century imperialism and on the colonial settings of Africa and India. This book offers a fresh perspective by focussing on the eighteenth century, and referring to the geographical region of Australia and the Pacific, which has had far less attention. The book also breaks new ground by being the first to approach the genre of the imaginary voyage from a post-colonial perspective. In addition to the new insights into European colonialism that it offers, the book illustrates many broader themes in eighteenth-century history and thought. These include connections between the rise of science and modern imperialism, the development of narrative history and fiction and the influence of romanticism, the evolution of the early novel in Britain and France, and the role of mythology in the development of national identity.

Literature of Travel and Exploration
Literature of Travel and Exploration

Author: Jennifer Speake

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 3477

ISBN-13: 1135456623

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Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.

Occult Scientific Mentalities
Occult Scientific Mentalities

Author: Brian Vickers

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1986-06-27

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780521338363

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The essays in this volume present a collective study of one of the major problems in the recent history of science: To what extent did the occult 'sciences' (alchemy, astrology, numerology, and natural magic) contribute to the scientific revolution of the late Renaissance? These studies of major scientists (Kepler, Bacon, Mersenne, and Newton) and of occultists (Dee, Fludd, and Cardano), complemented by analyses of contemporary official and unofficial studies at Cambridge and Oxford and discussions of the language of science, combine to suggest that hitherto the relationship has been too crudely stated as a movement 'from magic to science'. In fact, two separate mentalities can be traced, the occult and the scientific, each having different assumptions, goals, and methodologies. The contributors call into question many of the received ideas on this topic, showing that the issue has been wrongly defined and based on inadequate historical evidence. They outline new ways of approaching and understanding a situation in which two radically different and, to modern eyes, incompatible ways of describing reality persisted side-by-side until the demise of the occult in the late seventeenth century. Their work, accordingly, sets the whole issue in a new light.

1650-1850
1650-1850

Author: Kevin L. Cope

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2023-04-14

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1684484642

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Rigorously inventive and revelatory in its adventurousness, 1650–1850 opens a forum for the discussion, investigation, and analysis of the full range of long-eighteenth-century writing, thinking, and artistry. Combining fresh considerations of prominent authors and artists with searches for overlooked or offbeat elements of the Enlightenment legacy, 1650–1850 delivers a comprehensive but richly detailed rendering of the first days, the first principles, and the first efforts of modern culture. Its pages open to the works of all nations and language traditions, providing a truly global picture of a period that routinely shattered boundaries. Volume 28 of this long-running journal is no exception to this tradition of focused inclusivity. Readers will experience two blockbuster multi-author special features that explore both the deep traditions and the new frontiers of early modern studies: one that views adaptation and digitization through the lens of “Sterneana,” the vast literary and cultural legacy following on the writings of Laurence Sterne, a legacy that sweeps from Hungarian renditions of the puckish novelist through the Bloomsbury circle and on into cybernetics, and one that pays tribute to legendary scholar Irwin Primer by probing the always popular but also always challenging writings of that enigmatic poet-philosopher, Bernard Mandeville. All that, plus the usual cavalcade of full-length book reviews. ISSN: 1065-3112 Published by Bucknell University Press, distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.