The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. Stagl weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasizing links between the figures, the philosophies and the literature of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected. In focusing on the ars apodemica , or art of travelling, a body of formal instruction on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, Stagl demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West. A History of Curiosity examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a critical-historical perspective. The two principal methods of research, travel and the questionnaire, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times.
Biography
Justin Stagl
"...Stagl's explorations of late eighteenth-century debates over the nature of World History are also enlightening, as they reveal the origins of Volkskunde and ethnologie - categories that were to dominate travel and scholarship for the next two centries to the present." -- The Voltaire Foundation of University of Oxford, John P. Mitchell, Queens College, Cambridge
"This strikingly original, painstakingly researched...book exhibits all the virtues and a few of the weaknesses of long-sustained maverick devotion. Though not exclusively focused upon travel, it will remain a pillar of scholarship in travel history...For anyone interested in the history of travel cultures this book - with its rich references to primary manuscript sources and German historical scholarship not available in English - will prove indispensable." -- Judith Adler of Department of Sociology, Memorial University of New Foundland, Canada
