Foreign Bodies
Author(s): Kathryn N. McDaniel
Publisher: Vanderbilt University
Published: 2000
Page count: 524
Description:
Foreign Bodies: Reflections of Self and Others in English Travel Literature, 1650-1750, investigates the variety of ways early modern English travelers described and interpreted foreigners' bodies. In the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, travel literature reached new heights of proliferation and popularity. Beyond curiosity, readers looked to these descriptions for valuable information about the strange cultures explorers were discovering. The way foreigners presented themselves--their dress, deportment, and even attractiveness--indicated their ability or willingness to engage in trade and their openness to exploitation. Ultimately, travelers' depictions of foreign bodies led them and their readers to dramatic conclusions about a people's capacity for civilization and the nature of their humanity. Discussions of European notions of otherness have focused on the period of "discovery" in the Renaissance and the period of formal empire in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But the intermediate period was an important time of transition when Europeans were figuring out exactly where they stood in relation to various foreign cultures.
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