Visions of Persia

Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius

Elio Brancaforte author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Harvard University Press

Published:14th Feb '04

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Visions of Persia cover

This work examines the travel account of a German baroque author who journeyed in search of silk from Northern Germany, through Muscovy, to the court of Shah Safi in Isfahan.

Adam Olearius introduced Persian literature, history, and arts to the German-speaking public; his frank appraisal of Persian customs foreshadows the enlightened spirit of the eighteenth century (influencing Montesquieu’s Persian Letters as well as Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan) and prepares the way for German Romanticism’s infatuation with Persian poetry.

Elio Brancaforte focuses on the visual and discursive nexus uniting Olearius’s text with the numerous engravings that supplement the book. The emphasis falls on contextualized readings of Olearius’s decorative frontispieces and his new and improved map of Persia and the Caspian Sea, as expressions of early modern subjectivity.

ISBN: 9780674012547

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 426g

272 pages