1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910825332203321

Autore

Tautz Birgit

Titolo

Reading and seeing ethnic difference in the enlightenment : from China to Africa / / Birgit Tautz

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Basingstoke, : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

ISBN

1-281-36317-0

9786611363178

0-230-60364-5

Edizione

[1st ed. 2007.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (247 p.)

Disciplina

830.9920693

Soggetti

German literature - 18th century - History and criticism

German literature - 19th century - History and criticism

Ethnicity in literature

Africa In literature

China In literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Hegel at the Limits of Discourse; 2 Threads of a Texture: Leibniz's Translation of China; 3 Reading Sovereign Subjectivity via China; 4 Detailed Ethnicity: Perception and Gender in Travel Accounts; 5 Bodies on Stage: Late Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics of Blackness; 6 Reading History, Seeing Selves: The Turn to the Modern; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

This book investigates the contested ways in which eighteenth-century German philosophers, scientists, poets, and dramatists perceived and represented China and Africa from 1680 to 1830. Tautz demonstrates in compelling ways that reading China allowed for the integration of cultural difference into Enlightenment universalism, whereas seeing Africa exposed irreducible differences that undermined any claims of universality. By working through the case of eighteenth-century Germany and Europe, the book adds an important cross-cultural and historical dimension to questions relevant to our world today.