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9781472592354

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Dorothy Figueira has written a magisterial account of Western encounters with India, and presented not only a fascinating story -- with unforgettable characters, some mythical and semi-historical, like Prester John; some historical eminences like Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama and Camoens; others, like Ludovico de Varthema and Pietro della Valle, who deserve to be better known -- but an instructive lesson that Europe did not truly know itself until it encountered the mage and reality of an Indian Other. The book is theoretically informed, and philologically detailed, and one is grateful for a guide who is not only genial, but deeply knowledgeable and well-informed. Eugene Eoyang, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, USA Literary comparatist Dorothy Figueira studied under some of the most penetrating critical minds of the 20th-century in the humanities and social sciences: Claude L vi-Strauss, Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Wendy Doniger. This book, her fourth with India as a central focus, is a superb contribution to cross-cultural studies. In lucid, engaging and always intelligent prose, she analyzes important issues of alterity in the cross-cultural space between India and the West, with commentary on figures as iconic and different as Homer, St. Augustine, Prester John, Columbus and Camoens. Her work also reaches beyond India and the West to interrogate and call into question much current critical theory and the sometimes assumed infallibility of our own 21st-century interpretations and reconstructions of other cultures, epochs and encounters. Michael Palencia-Roth, Emeritus Professor of Comparative & World Literature, Spanish and Latin American Studies, University of Illinois, USA

Dorothy Figueira has written a magisterial account of Western encounters with India, and presented not only a fascinating story -- with unforgettable characters, some mythical and semi-historical, like Prester John; some historical eminences like Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama and Camoens; others, like Ludovico de Varthema and Pietro della Valle, who deserve to be better known -- but an instructive lesson that Europe did not truly know itself until it encountered the mage and reality of an Indian Other. The book is theoretically informed, and philologically detailed, and one is grateful for a guide who is not only genial, but deeply knowledgeable and well-informed. * Eugene Eoyang, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, USA * Literary comparatist Dorothy Figueira studied under some of the most penetrating critical minds of the 20th-century in the humanities and social sciences: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Wendy Doniger. This book, her fourth with India as a central focus, is a superb contribution to cross-cultural studies. In lucid, engaging and always intelligent prose, she analyzes important issues of alterity in the cross-cultural space between India and the West, with commentary on figures as iconic and different as Homer, St. Augustine, Prester John, Columbus and Camoens. Her work also reaches beyond India and the West to interrogate and call into question much current critical theory and the sometimes assumed infallibility of our own 21st-century interpretations and reconstructions of other cultures, epochs and encounters. * Michael Palencia-Roth, Emeritus Professor of Comparative & World Literature, Spanish and Latin American Studies, University of Illinois, USA * Figueira’s insights reveal analogies and similarities between old travel narratives and contemporary challenges; they help the reader detect mirror-images in unfamiliar ways of interpreting the world. * Literary Research *

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Dorothy Figueira, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Georgia, USA.

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