Infelicities

Download or read book Infelicities written by Peter Mason and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Infelicities Peter Mason explores the texts, paintings, drawings, photographs, and museum displays in which the exotic has been represented from the early modern period to the present. He describes the unique iconography that Europeans developed to convey the exotic and the means they employed to display it once artifacts were brought to Europe. In both instances, the exotic object is taken out of its original context and given a meaning and significance it never had; this new meaning and significance, Mason argues, are derived from the imposition of European cultural values and the need to recontextualize the object in a European setting.