Customer Reviews

Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation

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While I understand this book presents a challenge to the reader, it is a seminal book in several fields: Mary Louise Pratt's prose is clear for a literary theorist and her vocabulary/jargon is appropriate to the subject. _Imperial Eyes_ takes the reader through several stages of European travel writing, and the effects these works have upon European representations and constructions of the "other." Pratt's strongest arguments deal with Mary Kingsley and Africa, in my personal opinion, but her work on Linneaus is important and relevant to history and to identity studies as well. As a professor, I would assign this book to an upper-division undergraduate course, and would expect students to have the ability to grapple with her argument and her prose. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the formation of modern European identity, the ideological underpinnings of colonialism, and the construction of the "other."

Vituperative, scathing truths about the world they don't teach you in high school make this an excellent book for anyone who likes to uncover the scandal beneath social, economic, and political realities formed in history. Pratt's poignant and stinging language drives home every point in a very sophistocated and flowing discourse. If you haven't taken a college course in Sociology, Africana, or Latin American Studies or similar, this language may be new to you but Pratt makes it as easy as watching an on-the-edge-of-your-seat sports match.

Mary Louise Pratt has a lot of fresh and important things to say, but her writing style makes this book tough to read. I consider myself a good reader, I can usually pick out main ideas and meanings quite easily, but I found this book really frustratingly hard to read! Pratt flip-flops between a readable, clear style and one in which she employs almost indeciperable sentences. I think her message is really important and structurally, "Imperial Eyes" is smartly organized, but it takes a lot of patience and re-reading to understand it.