Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia
£19.80£20.90 (-5%)
How Enlightenment Europe rediscovered its identity by measuring itself against the great civilizations of Asia
During the long eighteenth century, Europe’s travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. In this panoramic book, Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment’s nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan. He shows how major figures such as Leibniz, Voltaire, and Gibbon took a keen interest in Asian culture and challenges the notion that Europe’s formative engagement with the non-European world was invariably marred by an imperial gaze and presumptions of Western superiority. A momentous work by one of Europe’s most eminent historians, Unfabling the East brings the sights and sounds of this tumultuous age vividly to life. It takes readers on a thrilling voyage to the farthest shores, bringing back vital insights for our own multicultural age.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Princeton University Press, Reprint edition (1 Oct. 2019) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 696 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0691196478 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0691196473 |
| Dimensions | 14.61 x 4.45 x 22.86 cm |
by Amazon Customer
Extremely nuanced, erudite, and thought-provoking essay in Enlightenment ideas of and experiences with Arab, Asian, and Far Eastern cultures and countries. A tracking-down of a myriad notions of the Non-Western world, as held by 18th and early 19th C. thinkers, explorers, and travel writers – before colonialism set a new and radically different agenda for Western imaginings of the East. Reads like a novel!