Minds in Motion

Imagining Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature

Anne M. Thell

The central claim of Minds in Motion is that British travel writing of the long eighteenth century functions as an epistemological playing field where authors test empiricist models of engagement with the world while simultaneously seeking out the role of the self and the imagination in producing knowledge. Whether exploring the relationship between the senses and the mind, the narrative viability of experimental detachment, or the literary dynamics of virtual witnessing, eighteenth-century travel authors persistently confront their positionality and raise difficult questions about the nature and value of first-hand experience. In one way or another, they also complicate empiricist ideals by exploring the limits of individual perception and the role of the imagination in generating and relating knowledge.

While the genre is often viewed as either numbingly documentary or non-literary and commercial, travel literature actually operates at the front line of the period’s intellectual developments, illustrating both how individual writers grapple with philosophical ideals and how these ideals filter into the lives of ordinary people. Indeed, travel literature directly engages the scientific and philosophical concerns of the period, while it is also widely, avidly read; as such, it offers models for cognitive and rhetorical practices that are evaluated and either embraced or rejected by readers (in a process of identification not unlike that which occurs in early English fiction). Moreover, because eighteenth-century travel literature is so crucial to the development of so many fields—from botany to the novel—it illustrates vividly the divisive energies of discipline and genre formation while also archiving the shared aims and methods of what will become discrete fields of study. Travelogues as diverse as Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666) and Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) reveal the epistemological circuitry of the eighteenth century and historicize the absorption of the philosophical tendencies that have come to define modernity. « less more »

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 286 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61148-827-2 • Hardback • August 2017 • $105.00 • (£70.00)

978-1-61148-828-9 • eBook • August 2017 • $99.50 • (£65.00)

Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Books & Reading, Literary Criticism / Modern / 18th Century

Minds in Motion

Imagining Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The central claim of Minds in Motion is that British travel writing of the long eighteenth century functions as an epistemological playing field where authors test empiricist models of engagement with the world while simultaneously seeking out the role of the self and the imagination in producing knowledge. Whether exploring the relationship between the senses and the mind, the narrative viability of experimental detachment, or the literary dynamics of virtual witnessing, eighteenth-century travel authors persistently confront their positionality and raise difficult questions about the nature and value of first-hand experience. In one way or another, they also complicate empiricist ideals by exploring the limits of individual perception and the role of the imagination in generating and relating knowledge.

While the genre is often viewed as either numbingly documentary or non-literary and commercial, travel literature actually operates at the front line of the period’s intellectual developments, illustrating both how individual writers grapple with philosophical ideals and how these ideals filter into the lives of ordinary people. Indeed, travel literature directly engages the scientific and philosophical concerns of the period, while it is also widely, avidly read; as such, it offers models for cognitive and rhetorical practices that are evaluated and either embraced or rejected by readers (in a process of identification not unlike that which occurs in early English fiction). Moreover, because eighteenth-century travel literature is so crucial to the development of so many fields—from botany to the novel—it illustrates vividly the divisive energies of discipline and genre formation while also archiving the shared aims and methods of what will become discrete fields of study. Travelogues as diverse as Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666) and Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) reveal the epistemological circuitry of the eighteenth century and historicize the absorption of the philosophical tendencies that have come to define modernity.

Book Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 286 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61148-827-2 • Hardback • August 2017 • $105.00 • (£70.00)

978-1-61148-828-9 • eBook • August 2017 • $99.50 • (£65.00)

Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Books & Reading, Literary Criticism / Modern / 18th Century

Author

Anne M. Thell is assistant professor of English literature at National University of Singapore.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Imagining Empiricism
Chapter 1: Lady Phoenix: Motion, Imagination, and Cavendish’s Blazing World
Chapter 2: Pirate Scientists: Narrative versus Natural History in the “New Voyages” of the 1690s
Chapter 3: “A Prospect of the World on the other Side”: Defoe’s New Voyage and Virtual Travel Experience
Chapter 4: Narrative Authority and Ideal Presence in John Hawkesworth’s Account of the Voyages
Chapter 5: Johnson’s Journey and the Terror of Sight
Epilogue: Imagining Perception
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Minds in Motion

Imagining Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature

Anne M. Thell

Minds in Motion

Imagining Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature

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