About this ebook
What does it mean to encounter the "Other"? How have Western scholars, writers, and philosophers understood—or misunderstood—the rich traditions of India?
In The Exotic, Dorothy M. Figueira offers a masterful exploration of the West's engagement with Sanskrit studies, tracing the complex intersections of culture, ideology, and imagination from the nineteenth century to today. From German, French, and English scholarship to the tangled legacies of Indo-Germanism and National Socialism, Figueira uncovers how exoticism has served both as a source of inspiration and a lens of distortion.
With unparalleled expertise in Sanskrit, Indian intellectual history, and European thought, Figueira illuminates the West's appropriation—and misappropriation—of Eastern ideas. The result is a rich, nuanced portrait of contrasting cultural discourses, revealing both the beauty and the perils of intellectual fascination with the "exotic."
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About the author
Dorothy M. Figueira is Assistant Professor at State University of New York, Stony Brook. She is the author of Translating the Orient: The Reception of Sakuntala in Nineteenth-Century Europe, also published by SUNY Press.
