Curiosity
Subtitle: a cultural history of early modern inquiry
By: Barbara M. Benedict.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 321
Subjects: English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Curiosities and wonders in literature; English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Literature and science -- Great Britain -- History; Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History; Collectors and collecting in literature; Curiosity in literature; Monsters in literature; Museums in literature
Description: "What kind of person is curious? What makes a person or thing an object of curiosity? From Gulliver to Frankenstein, from detectives to hot air baloonists, curious and inquiring characters have been portrayed as themselves curiosities, as social upstarts, and as spectacles to behold. With Curiosity, Barbara Benedict offers a new cultural history of curiosity as it shaped English writing from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries.".

"Drawing on novels both popular and obscure, ghost stories, travel narratives, trial transcripts, journalism, poems, and pornography, Benedict argues that writers of this period depicted curiosity as an unsavory form of cultural ambition. Curiosity, we learn, was persistently seen as a king of transgression that allowed curious people - scientists, collectors, and prayers of all sorts - to escape their natural places and usurp institutions, meanings, and bodies for private use.".

"Finely illustrated and the first of its kind, Curiosity is a broad study of modern inquiry that explores the way forbidden topics like the occult, sexuality, gender, and the origin of power became topics of public investigation."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-311) and index.