Curiosité subversive : « orientalisation » du libertinage et géographie morale

• Main Author: Stéphane Van Damme
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut du Monde Anglophone 2014-12-01
• Series: Etudes Epistémè
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/327

The historiography of libertinism has long paid attention to libertine social identity or to heterodoxy in terms of religious beliefs in a national context. It is hard to find any studies about the production of knowledge. This article leaves France behind to consider the status of travel narratives and geographical knowledge in libertine writings. To what extent can travel writing be regarded as founding a libertine anthropology ? From the outset we need to be wary of the old definitions of anthropological practices and to assess the orientalisation of libertinism that took place in the second part of the seventeenth century.