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COPYRIGHT 1994 University of Illinois Press
By Gloria Flaherty. Princeton: The Princeton University Press, 1992. PP. xv + 320. Illustrated. $35.
The author has chosen her title with care. Her study not only offers a detailed account of the interest in shamanism and other forms of the occult that arose in the eighteenth century as European travelers, missionaries, and scholars increasingly explored distant lands and cultures, but also renders that account in the light of the supposedly ultrarationalistic context in which the new development occurred. Yet there is no trace of tendentiousness in her presentation--something one might expect in the climate of antirationalism that prevails today. One of the great virtues of the late Professor Flaherty's book is the mature balance with which she presents her subject and her theses. We are being reminded, not taught. This scholarly objectivity lends credibility to the exotic material assembled in the first part of the study, entitled "The European Reception of Shamanism," and prompts acceptance of the arguments modestly but cogently presented in the latter part, "The Implications of Shamanism for the Arts in Europe." The arguments go to the important question of the evolution of Romanticism out of the spirit of the Enlightenment. Too often the Romantic movement is regarded as a revolt against rather...
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