Oxford U Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780190884796. 240 p. $74.
The Persian Mirror is the first book to trace the French preoccupation with Persia in the seventeenth century and uncover Persia’s impact on Louis XIV’s France. Long before Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, French intellectuals, diplomats, and even ordinary Parisians were fascinated by Persia. The Persian Mirror describes how the French came to see themselves in Safavid Persia. In doing so, it revises our notions of Orientalism and the exotic and suggests that early modern Europeans had more nuanced responses to Asia than previously imagined. Taking an expansive interdisciplinary and transnational approach, this book draws upon a wide array of historical sources, such as travel literature, fairy tales, images, and diplomatic documents.
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