Exoticism and the Culture of Exploration

Historians use the phrase the cult of the exotic to describe the fascination with the foreign or strange that both led to and was intensified by the eighteenth centurys scientific and imperialistic ventures in the Pacific and elsewhere. This volume offers new historical contexts for encounters both real and imaginary and shows the evolution of Europeans ideas about themselves and those cultures they considered exotic. The essays draw on a wide variety of sourcesart, architecture, scientific and literary works, journals and diaries, and the European popular cultural and political pressto explore eighteenth-century perceptions of the exotic and to demonstrate just how far-reaching the cult of the exotic was.Contributors. Geraldine Barnes, Alexandra Cook, David Culpin, John Greene, Suzanne Kiernan, Christa Knellwolf, Adrian Mitchell, Lisa OConnell, David Paxman, Ali Uzay Peker, Glynis Ridley, Nicholas Rogers, Walter Veit