Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry [Paperback]

Barbara M. Benedict (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0226042642 | ISBN-13: 978-0226042640

"Pithy and wide-ranging. . . . This study provides a fresh new lens through which to reinvestigate the whole of early modern English literature."—Library Journal

In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Although curiosity is generally considered a virtue in Western culture, in early modern England (1660-1820) a curious person was thought to harbor social ambitions or threaten the very order of nature and society. In this pithy and wide-ranging study, Benedict (English, Trinity Coll.; Making the Modern Reader) tries to discover why, in that era, the curiosity seeker often became the curiosity and the aficionado of monsters became the monster itself. This study of responses to the various manifestations of curiosity from the establishment of the Royal Society to 18th-century periodicals to 19th-century balloon ascents is truly central to any exploration of the early modern period in England. The case Benedict makes for curiosity's being a major concern in such literary works as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, and Samuel Johnson's Rasselas is very convincing. Although it is hindered by some sluggish academic prose, this study provides a fresh new lens through which to reinvestigate the whole range of early modern English literature. Highly recommended for all academic libraries. Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Robinson Crusoe told us that his head was always filled 'with rembling Thoughts.' That is how he got into such trouble, but it is also the way he survived. Rambling thoughts, as Benedict shows in this exuberant study, were at the center of English literary and cultural experience from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Transgressive, uncontrollable, hopelessly vulgar and at the same time exalted and ennobling, the passion of curiosity was the key that unlocked the sensibility of modernity in its great formative age." - Stephen Greenblatt, author of Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World "Benedict assembles her own gorgeous literary curiosity cabinet crammed with excerpts from novels, poems, journalism, travel narratives, trial transcripts and pornography.... The book is teeming with big questions and fine distinctions." - Ian Sansom, The Guardian "Pithy and wide-ranging.... This study provides a fresh new lens through which to reinvestigate the whole of early modern English literature." - Library Journal

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Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (August 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226042642
• ISBN-13: 978-0226042640
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,341,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Curious about curiosity, July 7, 2010

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Paperback)

Benedict's book is something of a literary curiosity cabinet, to use one of her favorite phrases. It is full of interesting little nuggets of information, but I am left somewhat puzzled as to the point. The era that she focuses on, 1660-1820, saw the rise of the empirical method, and she makes the case that many people thought that the researchers who would later be called scientists were pushing into forbidden knowledge. I found that part interesting, and I expected more on the subject. Most of the book, however, discusses the sort of curiosity that I would think is part of the human condition.

Its forms may change: books collecting oddities obviously only become possible with the development of inexpensive printing and the rise of literacy. Better communication, exploration, and travel made more curiosities available. But was there really any change in people's tendency to be curious? Benedict speaks of curiosities disappearing into private collections, but many of these things were never publicly available until the rise of museums. When did the average person get to see exotic plants, minerals, and artifacts, unless perhaps they were a servant dusting them?

In earlier times, villages, tithings, frankpledges were forms of communal responsibility that must have encouraged a lively interest in the doings of the neighbors, since the collective could be held responsible for individual negligence. Relics added greatly to the attraction of places of worship and pilgrimage, so much to that the houses competed for them, and the church had to limit the "finding" of new relics. Was this entirely for the religious merit, or was it also because the relics were curiosities? Didn't people stare at monstrous births and grisly accidents? I find it hard to believe that gossip and prying about a suspicious pregnancy or neighborly failure or the lives of famous people is not a constant, and Benedict does nothing to establish that it was new in her chosen period. The issues of healthy interest versus prying continue to this day with scandal magazines and tabloids. If one is interested in the particular details of how curiosity manifested itself in this single time period, well here's your book.

I must admit to ignoring a great deal of the theoretical framework.