In this fascinating collection of essays Harvard Emeritus Professor Karl S. Guthke examines the ways in which, for European scholars and writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, world-wide geographical exploration led to an exploration of the self. Guthke explains how in the age of Enlightenment and beyond intellectual developments were fuelled by excitement about what Ulrich Im Hof called "the grand opening-up of the wide world”, especially of the interior of the non-European continents. This outward turn was complemented by a fascination with "the world within” as anthropology and ethnology focused on the humanity of the indigenous populations of far-away lands – an interest in human nature that suggested a way for Europeans to understand themselves, encapsulated in Gauguin’s Tahitian rumination "What are we?”
The essays in the first half of the book discuss first- or second-hand, physical or mental encounters with the exotic lands and populations beyond the supposed cradle of civilisation. The works of literature and documents of cultural life featured in these essays bear testimony to the crossing not only of geographical, ethnological, and cultural borders but also of borders of a variety of intellectual activities and interests. The second section examines the growing interest in astronomy and the engagement with imagined worlds in the universe, again with a view to understanding homo sapiens, as compared now to the extra-terrestrials that were confidently assumed to exist. The final group of essays focuses on the exploration of the landscape of what was called "the universe within”; featuring, among a variety of other texts, Schiller’s plays The Maid of Orleans and William Tell, these essays observe and analyse what Erich Heller termed "The Artist’s Journey into the Interior.”
This collection, which travels from the interior of continents to the interior of the mind, is itself a set of explorations that revel in the discovery of what was half-hidden in language. Written by a scholar of international repute, it is eye-opening reading for all those with an interest in the literary and cultural history of (and since) the Enlightenment.
The publication of this volume is supported by a grant from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research at Harvard University.
The publication of this volume is supported by a grant from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research at Harvard University.
Exploring the Interior: Essays on Literary and Cultural History
Karl S. Guthke | May 2018
366 | 1 b&w illustration | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Paperback: 9781783743933
ISBN Hardback: 9781783743940
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783743957
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783743964
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783743971
ISBN Hardback: 9781783743940
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783743957
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783743964
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783743971
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783745289
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0126
Subject codes: BIC: D (Literature and literary studies), JFCX (History of ideas), 3J (Modern period, c. 1500 onward); BISAC: LIT004130 (LITERARY CRITICISM / European / General), LIT024030 (LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 18th Century)
Subject codes: BIC: D (Literature and literary studies), JFCX (History of ideas), 3J (Modern period, c. 1500 onward); BISAC: LIT004130 (LITERARY CRITICISM / European / General), LIT024030 (LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 18th Century)
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Preface
Introduction: From the Interior of Continents to the Interior of the MindI. "THE GREAT MAP OF MANKIND UNROLLED”
1. Faust and the Cannibals: Geographical Horizons in the Sixteenth Century
2. "Errand into the Wilderness”: The American Careers of Some Cambridge Divines in the Pre-Commonwealth Era
3. At Home in the World: Scholars and Scientists Expanding Horizons
4. In the Wake of Captain Cook: Global versus Humanistic Education in the Age of Goethe
5. Opening Goethe’s Weimar to the World: Travellers from Great Britain and America
6. In a "Far-Off Land”: B. Traven’s Mexican Stories
II. WORLDS IN THE STARRY SKIES
7. Nightmare and Utopia: Extraterrestrials from Galileo to Goethe
8. Lessing’s Science: Exploring Life in the Universe
III. THE UNIVERSE WITHIN
9. A Saint with Blood on her Hands: Schiller’s Joan of Arc
10. The Curse of Good Deeds: Schiller’s William Tell
11. Revelation or Deceit? Last Words in Detective Novels
12. Genius and Insanity: Nietzsche’s Collapse as Seen from Paraguay
Acknowledgements
Selective Bibliography for Further Reading
Index
© 2018 Karl S. Guthke.
Copyright on the translations of chapters one, seven and eight are held by the translators.

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for non-commercial purposes, providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Karl S. Guthke, Exploring the Interior: Essays on Literary and Cultural History. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018. http://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0126
Further details about CC BY-NC-ND licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
The publication of this volume is supported by a grant from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research at Harvard University.
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Cover image: Louis Brion de la Tour, Mappemonde philosophique et politique, où sont tracés les voyages de Cook et de la Pérouse (Paris: chez Basset M[d] d’estampes et fabricant de papier peints, 1801). Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:2092175
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
The publication of this volume is supported by a grant from the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research at Harvard University.
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Cover image: Louis Brion de la Tour, Mappemonde philosophique et politique, où sont tracés les voyages de Cook et de la Pérouse (Paris: chez Basset M[d] d’estampes et fabricant de papier peints, 1801). Courtesy of Harvard Map Collection, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:2092175