From Wonder to Curiosity in Early Modern Travel Writing

From Wonder to Curiosity in Early Modern Travel Writing. Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by David Jones. July 2019 Table of Contents. Page 3: Abstract. Page 4: Chapter I - Introduction: Wonder and Curiosity. Page 21: Chapter II - Curiosity and Collecting: The Kunstkammer. Page 37: Chapter III - Witchcraft at Home and Abroad. Page 51: Chapter IV - Portals to the Afterlife: Boundaries in Literature, Travel and Knowledge. Page 67: Chapter V - Medicine, Travel and Collection. Page 98: Chapter VI - Conclusion: The Status of Curiosity? Page 116: Bibliography. 2 Abstract. The early modern period saw an unprecedented rise in travel and travel writing. As voyages brought travellers to new and scarcely recorded parts of the world, this in turn led to encounters with what we might term the ‘wondrous,’ phenomena apparently defying all explanation and evoking a wonder reaction in those witnessing it. At the same time there existed ‘curiosities,’ interesting or intriguing objects sometimes displayed in large collections, or kept for personal pleasure. Wonders and curiosities, especially in regards to travel, were interlinked. This thesis examines how the process was one of transition, with the wondrous often being lowered to the level of the merely curious. The discussion encompasses in part an analysis of the terms ‘wonder’ and ‘curiosity,’ and argues that a separation of the two is essential in understanding how knowledge was constructed during the period. A careful analysis of how wonder was, and still is, transformed into curiosity, illuminates how new information is incorporated into existing knowledge structures. The thesis traces this development with reference to a wide range of source material including medicinal texts, legal records and dramatic works, but travel remains the crux of the discussion. I argue that the nature of travel writing and the associated methodologies of collection and classification, were a catalyst for the transformation of the wondrous into the merely curious. 3 Chapter One - Introduction: Wonder and Curiosity. Section One - An Introduction to Wonder. The above image, A Prospect of the Cove Avebury, was produced in 1723 by William Stukeley. It is perhaps the best illustration of the complex relationship between wonder and curiosity that so characterised the early modern period, the relationship which will form the crux of this thesis.1 On the far right of the image we see a man in a pose suggestive of wonder, and undergoing what we might term a wonder reaction. He stands in awe, experiencing what Cohen described as a ‘wonderpause,’ whereby a person is ‘so captivated by sensory input that they become unaware of where they are physically,’ and remain frozen to the spot, firmly in the grip of wonder.2 There is something inquisitive about the figure’s pose, too. He has adopted a bemused yet questioning stance. Over the course of this thesis we will explore how wonder was almost always linked to mystery, and how the resolution of that mystery affected wonder as a category. On the left, another man observes the stones more carefully, with a book in his hand. He is intrigued, but he is working to gain more knowledge of the site. This man is curious, but he is not struck with wonder, and he is combining his curiosity with study. This is an important process, and will in fact form the central core of this thesis, suggestive as it is that curiosity could become a useful category as opposed to wonder struck stupor. Elsewhere in the image, another man stands directly before the stones, perhaps a surveyor with a staff in his hand, taking his curiosity one step further and actively studying the site to build some knowledge of it. Another man stands, partially in shadow, observing from a distance, and his reaction is perhaps somewhere between the wonder of the first man and the 1 William Stukeley, Avebury, A Temple of the British Druids (1740) (W. Innys Press: London, 1740) p.12. 2 Adam Max Cohen, Wonder in Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2012) p.173. 4 more curious attitudes of the others. All the men are staring at the same thing, but one seeks to understand while the other, apparently wrapped in wonder, does not. Stukeley believed that curiosity was a natural progression from wonder. His writings variously suggest that ‘upon observing the beauty and wonder of nature and the stars’ it is an innate human reaction to question, and attempt to learn about their mysteries.3 Wonder led to a desire to learn. Wonder led to curiosity, although the relationship between the two was, and still is, far from simple. A great deal of scholarly work has been done on both wonder and curiosity in the early modern period, but this thesis takes a different approach. Rather than studying the two in isolation, it seeks to more accurately disentangle the two terms and trace the development of the wondrous into the curious. To be more precise, this is a process whereby early modern wonders become taxonomies within the wider category of the curious, and are thus stripped of their wondrous connotations. It is a matter of transition whereby the mysteries of the wondrous are categorised and organised by the curious, rendering that which was previously beyond comprehension as intelligible or mundane. Travel and travel writing are essential to this process, and to this thesis, for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most obvious is that travel brought people face to face with the wondrous on a routine basis. The explosion of travel and travel narratives in the early modern period meant that accounts of the strange, the marvellous and the outright wondrous were increasingly common. How travellers treated these encounters in literature, how the wondrous encountered abroad was collected, categorised and brought home, is essential in understanding not only early modern conceptions of the wonderful, but how wonder could and often did transition into the separate category of the merely curious. There is, too, a separation of knowledge structures implied in this process: the wondrous from the curious, and this has implications which will also be important later in the thesis. This will be the crux of the thesis: the relationship between wonder and curiosity, and more precisely how the wondrous is transformed into the curious, how the two knowledge structures are separated, and what this means for curiosity. We will consider how curiosity, once separated from the wonderful, could be useful, and what purpose it might serve. The study will be conducted through the lens of travel, as this was essential to the process. We will adopt a case by case study of this process, each of them offering a different perspective on the transition process. This chapter will offer a brief overview and introduction to the terms ‘wonder’ and ‘curiosity,’ before moving on to the kunstkammer in the next chapter. The kunstkammer, or cabinet of curiosity, consisted of items gathered from around the world, categorised and displayed. Obviously this is important, as we will examine how wonderful objects could be transformed into curious objects put on display for entertainment or further study. The chapter will also consider literary collections of curiosity, again amassed through travel, and how they treated the apparently incomprehensible and wonderful. The chapter will be especially useful in establishing the difference between the wonderful and the curious, and the important role of travel, collection and categorisation in the re-classification of the once wonderful into the merely curious. The third chapter is concerned with witchcraft, both at home and abroad. Witchcraft is an important example because it represented a type of wonder supposedly embedded within the domesticity of the home country. The chapter will open by giving an introduction to how witchcraft was treated at home, how it was categorised by court records and also as a sensationalist tale in curiosity collections. Either type of categorisation helps to reduce witchcraft to something which is at least comprehensible. The chapter then proceeds to compare the treatment of witchcraft at home to witchcraft abroad, a vital difference in conceptualising how travel framed wonder, and how the supernatural encountered through travel differed radically to that at home. This chapter in part justifies travel’s place at the heart of this thesis, as it shows the problems associated with categorising wonder abroad, but also reveals most starkly the split in knowledge structures between 3 David Boyd Haycock, William Stukeley: Science, Religion, and Archaeology in Eighteenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002) p87. 5 the wonderful and the curious. The third chapter then examines the wonder/curiosity transition in relation to hell-mouths and supposed gateways to the afterlife encountered through travel, with special reference to Mount Hecla in Iceland, perhaps the most famous example of the period. This chapter explores what we might consider the ultimate source of wonder: the afterlife, something so incomprehensible that it could not be understood in life. Despite this, travellers were brought face to face with supposed gateways to the afterlife, and how they recorded information about them, categorised them and eventually studied them, will prove vital in understanding how wonder can transition into curiosity. This chapter will present perhaps the most linear example of the process. After a study of hell-mouths, we will move on to consider how the category of the curious could be useful, once it has been stripped of any wonder. This will occur through the lens of medicinal remedies and herbal practices encountered through travel. Chapter four explores how travellers would often gather medicines and accounts of surgery, before bringing them home for further study. Many of these cures were considered miraculous, but they were nonetheless collected, curated and studied so that they might be useful at home.

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