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Mobility and Masks

Mobility and Masks Cultural Identity in Travel Literature - Ilex Foundation Series

Paperback (26 Apr 2024)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Travelers have always experimented with disguise while observing the disguises of others. Each of the chapters in Mobility and Masks illustrates the strategies of concealment in the experience of travel: a seventeenth-century German aristocrat discovers new freedom as she travels incognito, Jesuits write home from China in the eighteenth century about how costume changes serve their mission, a Chinese opera star reflects on his own masked art during a tour of Russia in 1935. Masking can be a racial marker, as shown in two nineteenth-century accounts: an English woman encountering the creole culture of the West Indies and a French woman observing how cosmetic beauty is defined in Shanghai. Fictional representations of the masked traveler are illustrative, too: masked voices in the lyric poetry of Horace, the masked woman as an obstacle in classic adventure tales, the failure of cultural masking in the story of a modern immigrant.

About the Publisher

Ilex Foundation

Founded in 1913, Harvard University Press is the publisher of such classic works as John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, E. O. Wilson's On Human Nature, and Helen Vendler's Dickinson. The Press continues to be a leading publisher of convergent works in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, while also taking bold steps in exciting new directions, from innovative partnerships, to a diverse translation program, to an expanded commitment to facilitating scholarly conversation around the globe.

Book information

ISBN: 9780674295803
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: Ilex Foundation
Pub date:
DEWEY: 809.9332
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 166
Weight: 286g
Height: 153mm
Width: 229mm
Spine width: 13mm