The eighteenth century was a time of great cultural change in Britain. It was a period marked by expeditions to the New World, Africa, and the Orient, and these voyages were reflected in the travel literature of the era. It was also a period in which...
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The eighteenth century was a time of great cultural change in Britain. It was a period marked by expeditions to the New World, Africa, and the Orient, and these voyages were reflected in the travel literature of the era. It was also a period in which seventeenth-century empiricism and the scientific method became dominant, and in which society became increasingly secular. Fundamental to the eighteenth-century worldview was the notion of the Great Chain of Being, in which all creatures and their Creator stood in a hierarchical relationship with one another. The years from 1660 to 1833 witnessed
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Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Reading Pope/Reasoning Race: Enlightenment Humanism and the Chain's Discursive Legacy; 2. Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and Ottobah Cugoano: Perspectives on a Theological Chain; 3. Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne: The Measure of Benevolence and the ""Cult of Sensibility""; 4. Dampier's Hottentots, Swift's Yahoos, and Equiano's Ibos: Imaging Blackness in a Colonialist Discourse; 5. Reading The History of Mary Prince: The Politics of Race and Gender; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index
