Diganta Bhattacharya
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sundarvan Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal & Research Scholar, Presidency University. Email: diganta.bhat@gmail.com
Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.16
Post-Enlightenment Exploration and the Aesthetic of Information: Curious with a Purpose
Abstract:
Exploration accounts written during the post-Enlightenment era of European expansion relied upon the agency of a romanticized narrator who could inspire a dedicated readership since he strategically projected the ‘performance’ of exploration as necessarily hazardous and hence, awe-inspiring. The concomitant element of romance was further emphasized in such texts since the precarious and vulnerable position of the explorer-narrator functioned as a much-needed foil to the sort of objectivist-detached discourse of functional intelligence that exploration narratives were increasingly expected to generate. The elaborate, methodical, organized and professional performance of overseas exploration needs to be understood as a targeted activity that utilized specific narratorial devices with an aim to make use of the widespread curiosity about the New World. This essay seeks to address the post-Enlightenment emergence of an ‘aesthetic of information’ along with its discursive trappings and epistemological frameworks which were ‘realized’ within a subculture of geographical exploration. ‘Knowledge’ aspired to be defined by empirical rigour, but the process of accessing and documenting it could scarcely avoid subjective variables.
Keywords: Enlightenment, Exploration, Knowledge, Information, Romantic, Aesthetic, Science, Functional, Empirical, Baconian, Curiosity