Focusing on travel journals by writers, navigators, philosophers, scientists, and anthropologists--from the eighteenth-century grand tour to the modern period--Dennis Porter explores how male authors at different historical moments conceptualized and represented the lands they encountered. Efforts to portray unfamiliar peoples and cultures are shown to give rise to rich and complex works, in which individual psychic investments frequently subvert an inherited cultural discourse. In exploring the various uses and pleasures of travel, Porter interprets it as a transgressive activity animated by desire and haunted by different forms of guilt. Broad in its historical scope and interdisciplinary in its approach, the book draws on literary theory, psychoanalysis, gender criticism, and the social history of ideas. Texts analyzed include works by Boswell, Diderot, Bougainville, Cook, Stendhal, Darwin, Flaubert, Freud, D. H. Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence, Gide, Lvi-Strauss, Barthes, and V. S. Naipaul. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume of studies on the Pacific, most of which relate to the French presence and influence in the region, has been planned as a tribute to the invaluable role John Dunmore has had in advancing historical knowledge of the Pacific and encouraging scholarly interest in this field.

This is the engrossing story of Mauritius, the exotic Indian Ocean island port of call at the heart of the fabled "Spice Route". Although first discovered and visited by the Arabs and the Portuguese, and subsequently colonised by the Dutch, the French and the English, it is the French influence that is most keenly felt in Mauritius today, thanks to France's nearly century-long rule over Mauritius from 1715 to 1810. Combining rich historical detail, rare archival documents, antique lithographs paintings, and portraits, and fascinating stories of well-known figures of the period - like the founder of the colony Governor Mahé de La Bourdonnais, the explorer and botanist Pierre Poivre, and the celebrated explorer Jean- François de Lapérouse - Mauritius on the Spice Route is an invitation to step back in time and discover the fascinating history of this exotic paradise.

Blending global scope with local depth, this book throws new light on important themes. Spanning four centuries and vast space, it combines the history of ideas with particular histories of encounters between European voyagers and Indigenous people in Oceania (Island Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands).

This volume is a collection of contributions about the history and practice of travel and travel writing from a variety of academic disciplines including anthropology, history, linguistics and literary criticism. It brings together scholars from over ten different countries and reflects on what travel is and how travel writings function. It traces the history of travel and travel writing and the notion or idea of a European civilisation that permeates performances and perceptions. The notion of Europe appears as a set of quality standards as well as guidelines for experiences against which civilisations are measured. This set of standards and guidelines, however, is far from stable. It is a floating foundation carrying different versions of Europe throughout time. The authors tackle the problem from different angles: travels from Europe across the seven oceans transported the idea of European civilisation just as travels to Europe or within Europe. The volume explores the different meanings attached to the term 'Europe' and 'civilisation' throughout history and shows how different political or cultural contexts affect the notion of what Europe is or should be.