Curiosity: a Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry
- List Price: $45.00
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press
- Publish date: 01/01/2001
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 an unsavory form of cultural ambition. Curiosity, we learn, was persistently seen as a kind 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.