Encounters with the other : a journey to the limits of language through works by Rousseau, Defoe, Prévost and Graffigny
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Encounters with the other : a journey to the limits of language through works by Rousseau, Defoe, Prévost and Graffigny
(Faux titre, 234)
Rodopi, 2003
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
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  France
  Belgium
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  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-301) and index
Previously issued as author's dissertation
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Encounters with the Other brings together a range of eighteenth-century texts in which the exploration of lingua incognita figures as a prominent topos . Drawing mostly on a corpus of French texts, but also including a number of works in English, Martin Calder attempts to realign well-known texts with more canonically marginalized works. The originality of the perspectives offered by this book lies in the comparative reading of works not previously conjoined. Encounters with otherness are marked by a transgression of the limits of language, occurring when language becomes alien or unfamiliar. Alterity may take various forms: a foreign language, a familiar language marked by the traits of foreignness, something unrecognizable as language, or even one's own language breaking down, as in madness. Unfamiliar language may be produced by a foreigner, by a child who cannot yet speak, in extreme cases by something unrecognizably human, in all cases by an agency somehow marked by difference. Narratives of encounters with otherness have written into them narratives of the discovery of the self. Implicitly informed by the reading techniques associated with literary theory, Encounters with the Other offers an insightful commentary on issues surrounding colonialism, cultural difference, gender and the importance of language to identity. Martin Calder's work challenges certain Eurocentric notions and exposes the problematic links between Enlightenment rationality and colonial expansion. This book is of interest both to undergraduate students and to academic researchers, and to a more general readership concerned with understanding the relationship between Europe, the 'West' and a wider world.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
A Note on Quotations and Translations
Introduction
Chapter One: The Speciousness of Origins
Chapter Two: The Infant Other: Feral Children and Civil Children
Chapter Three: Tropic Alterities / Tropical Territories: Lingual Colonialism in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
Chapter Four: Fantasy and Infantilization: The Abbe Prevost's Histoire d'une Grecque moderne
Chapter Five: Language and Self-Affirmation in Francoise Graffigny's Lettres d'une Peruvienne
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of Names
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