India has been fascinating travellers from the earliest ages of history, and has been described as a wondrous world of incredible wealth, as well as a somewhat mysterious place, by authors from many countries. The present volume is organized according to two main principles. First, we aim to dissect images of India in the long 19th century from multiple perspectives, images from a time during which the subcontinent saw a time of transition in many aspects of life, politics, and culture. Second, we seek to introduce narratology into the field of Indian cultural history as an innovative methodological tool that allows us to delve through the words of a text to its worlds and to generate our findings within a consistent theoretical and methodological framework and to compare them transculturally. To this end, the volume comprises six case studies, each analysing a thrilling and somewhat exceptional encounter with India during the long nineteenth century. The narratives under consideration are told by authors from different cultural backgrounds, in different languages and with different aims.
