A distinct European perspective on Asia emerged in the late
Middle Ages. Early reports of a homogeneous "India" of marvels and
monsters gave way to accounts written by medieval travelers that
indulged readers' curiosity about far-flung landscapes and cultures
without exhibiting the attitudes evident in the later writings of
aspiring imperialists. Mining the accounts of more than twenty
Europeans who made--or claimed to have made--journeys to Mongolia,
China, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia between the
mid-thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Kim Phillips
reconstructs a medieval European vision of Asia that was by turns
critical, neutral, and admiring.In offering a cultural history of
the encounter between medieval Latin Christians and the distant
East, "Before Orientalism" reveals how Europeans' prevailing
preoccupations with food and eating habits, gender roles,
sexualities, civility, and the foreign body helped shape their
perceptions of Asian peoples and societies. Phillips gives
particular attention to the texts' known or likely audiences, the
cultural settings within which they found a foothold, and the
broader impact of their descriptions, while also considering the
motivations of their writers. She reveals in rich detail responses
from European travelers that ranged from pragmatism to wonder. Fear
of military might, admiration for high standards of civic life and
court culture, and even delight in foreign magnificence rarely
assumed the kind of secular Eurocentric superiority that would
later characterize Orientalism. Placing medieval writing on the
East in the context of an emergent "Europe" whose explorers sought
to learn more than to rule, "Before Orientalism" complicates our
understanding of medieval attitudes toward the foreign.
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