The Vision of China is the first book on China as it came to be reflected in English literature. As such, it also offers the first comprehensive study of the image of China in Western literature. Featuring essays by prominent Chinese scholars such as Qian Zongshu, Fan Cunzhong, and Chen Shouyi, it complements such works as Pierre Martino's L'Orient dans la litterature francaise au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siecle (1906), Ursula Aurich's China im Spiegel der deutschen Literature des 18. Jahrhunderts (1935), and E. Horst Tscharner's China in der deutschen Dichtung bis zur Klassik (1939).Together with William W. Appleton's A Cycle of Cathay: The Chinese Vogue in England during the 17th and 18th Centuries (1951) and Raymond Dawson's The Chinese Chameleon: An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese Civilization (1967), the book studies the last phase of the Chinese mode in England. Some of the articles collected here actually inspired Appleton's study, at least in part.As a contemporary volume on the construct of China, The Vision of China can readily be considered the companion study to Edward Said's envisioned Orient in Orientalism (1979), to Tzvetan Todorov's Africa in Nous et les autres: la reflection francaise sur la diversite humaine (1989), and Gauri Viswanathan's Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989).

Argues that eighteenth-century literature defined itself as 'English' and 'modern' by engaging with debates about Chinese history and culture.

The Chinese Impact upon English Renaissance Literature examines how English writers responded to the cultural shock caused by the first substantial encounter between China and Western Europe. Author Mingjun Lu explores how Donne and Milton came to be aware of England’s participation in ’the race for the Far East’ launched by Spain and Portugal, and how this new global awareness shaped their conceptions of cultural pluralism. Drawing on globalization theory, a framework that proves useful to help us rethink the literary world of Renaissance England in terms of global maritime networks, Lu proposes the concept of ’liberal cosmopolitanism’ to study early modern English engagement with the other. The advanced culture of the Chinese, Lu argues, inculcated in Donne and Milton a respect for difference and a cosmopolitan curiosity that ultimately led both authors to reflect in profound and previously unexamined ways upon their Eurocentric and monotheistic assumptions. The liberal cosmopolitan model not only opens Renaissance literary texts to globalization theory but also initiates a new way of thinking about the early modern encounter with the other beyond the conventional colonial/postcolonial, nationalist, and Orientalist frameworks. By pushing East-West contact back to the period in 1570s-1670s, Lu’s work uncovers some hitherto unrecognized Chinese elements in Western culture and their shaping influence upon English literary imagination.

Pagodas in Play analyzes the treatment of China in the imaginative and spectacular world of eighteenth-century Italian opera. It shows how Italians used perceptions of Chinese culture to address local and transnational developments, particularly Enlightenment and secular reform initiatives. Its focus on the texts and performance practices of opera, an entertainment form accessible to a wide public, reveals cultural operations and identities harder to detect in non-fictional reformist writings, the texts traditionally privileged to explain Italian mediations of Enlightenment ideas. In its close reading of nine libretti of the most salient Settecento operas treating China (opere serie and opere buffe by authors including Metastasio, Zeno, Goldoni and Lorenzi), Pagodas in Play differentiates Italian iterations of Chinese culture from French and English counterparts. It further challenges certain tenets of orientalism, showing how it operates when nationalist and/or colonialist projects are absent, and how orientalist practices in eighteenth-century Italy exhibit early on the complexity some scholars locate only in the twentieth century. Adrienne Ward teaches Italian literature and culture at the University of Virginia.

The Invention of China in Early Modern England describes how several different English communities became aware of China. It begins by describing how early modern intellectuals used the utopian ideal of China to license all kinds of progressive innovation before chronicling how England’s growing commerce in southeast Asia radically changed China’s representation in the English discourse community. For the new community of English merchants proposing to trade in Chinese goods, China became the seminal example in the growing discourse community of English Orientalism. It was an absolute or arbitrary authoritarian state, associated with crooked business dealings, and cloaked in a rhetoric of secrecy and exclusion—a dangerous exception to the traditions, values, and identities of the emergent English speaking states. Finally, the book points out some of the ways that contemporary English language sources continue to represent this early modern English thought tradition, labelling the complexities of modern China with analytical vocabulary perhaps better suited to the pressing political anxieties of the seventeenth century.

Beginning with a retrospective of the past century, this book offers a panoramic picture of Chinese comparative literature, from its nascence in the early 1920s, through its evolution in the 1980s, to the new development at the turn of the century, ending with a prospective look at the future of comparative literature in the 21st century. The articles presented here reveal the author’s deep understandings of the literature and culture of her own country and those of other countries. A rich array of case studies and in-depth theorizing make it an extremely interesting and enlightening read. Prof. Daiyun Yue is a prominent professor at Peking University and a leading figure in Chinese comparative literature. She has served as Head of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, PKU (1984—1998) and the third president of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association (1989—2014). Further, she is the founder of Dialogue Transculturel, a much-acclaimed journal of comparative literature. Prof. Yue approaches outstanding literature as a bridge to link people of different cultural traditions: “The reason why interdisciplinary literary research between two alien cultures is possible is because dialog between alien cultures, along with exchange and understanding, is more readily realized through literature.” Herein lies the value of comparative literature.

This book provides a critical study of how China was represented on the historical London stage in selected examples from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century—which corresponds with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China’s last monarchy. The examples show that during this historical period, the stage representations of the country were influenced in turn by Jesuit writings on China, Britain’s expanding material interest in China, the presence of British imperial power in Asia, and the establishment of diasporic Chinese communities abroad. While finding that many of these works may be read as gendered and feminized, Chang emphasizes that the Jesuits’ depiction of China as a country of high culture and in perennial conflict with the Tartars gradually lost prominence in dramatic imaginations to depictions of China’s material and visual attractions. Central to the book’s argument is that the stage representations of China were inherently intercultural and open to new influences, manifested by the evolving combinations of Chinese and English (British) traits. Through the dramatization of the Chinese Other, the representations questioned, satirized, and put in sharp relief the ontological and epistemological bases of the English (British) Self.

In The First British Trade Expedition to China, Nicholas D. Jackson explores the pioneering British trade expedition to China launched in the late Ming period by Charles I and the Courteen Association. While utilizing the vivid and unique perspective of its commander, Captain John Weddell, this study concentrates on the fleet’s adventures in south China between Portuguese Macao and the provincial capital, Guangzhou (Canton). Tracing the obscure origins of Sino-British diplomatic and commercial relations back to the late Ming era, Jackson examines the first episodes of Sino-British interaction, exchange, and collision in the seventeenth century. His definitive narrative and original analysis constitute a groundbreaking study of early modern British initiatives and enterprise in the coastal areas of south China. The book begins by sketching the Tudor-Stuart historical background of British trade expansion in Asia before precisely reconstructing the voyages of East India Company and then Courteen ships to Guangdong province. The core of the narrative illuminates the communications, intrigues, and confrontations between Ming officials and the British commanders and merchants. The monograph concludes with an analysis outlining the major lessons learned by all the personalities and parties involved in those unprecedented encounters and clashes. Among other theses, Jackson argues that this expedition demonstrates that as early as the seventeenth century, a significant difference in naval-military strength and sophistication obtained between Great Britain and China. “This book presents vivid and arresting details highlighting the differences between the early modern and modern eras. It features quasi-piratical actions by men with the audacity to venture into unknown lands, who were on the one hand defrauded by ‘interpreters’ of dubious origin and ‘officials’ of unverified credentials, but nonetheless emerged from the fray with laden ships and the incremental knowledge that contributed to the subsequent economic dominance of Europe.” —Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh “In this lively account of Sino-British exchanges, Nicholas D. Jackson provides us with the first book-length narrative of the much-neglected Weddell voyage to China in 1637. Scholars of the British Empire and East-West interactions will find much relevance in this masterfully delivered dialogue between two contending world powers.” —Paul A. Van Dyke, author of The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845

During a relatively short period, from around 1765 to 1780, the Dutch lawyer Jean Theodore Royer (1737-1807) was intensely engaged in the study of Chinese culture. Befriended VOC officials and their Chinese relations in Canton collected Chinese objects for him and helped him with his greatest ambition: the composition of a Chinese dictionary. The objects were given a home in his museum on the Herengracht in The Hague. Better than travel journals, they gave a picture of life in China in Royer’s time. Because the selection was largely made by modest Chinese traders, the collection does not so much give a picture of the material culture of the Chinese elite, but rather that of the ambitious, upwardly-mobile world of small traders and craftsmen. These are mostly ephemeral objects that have rarely been preserved, but they came to The Hague, thanks to Royer and his Chinese contacts. A bequest from his widow then ensured that the collection ended up in two Dutch museums: Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the objects are still present today.

Two English-Language Translators of Jin Ping Mei examines English translations of the Ming novel Jin Ping Mei by translators from different historical periods within the Anglophone world. Drawing upon theoretical insights from translation studies, literary criticism, and cultural studies, the book explores the treatment of salient features of the novel in translation, including cultural representation, narratological elements, gender-specific motifs, and (homo)sexual themes. Through literary re-imagining and artistic re-creation, Egerton transforms a complex and sprawling narrative into a popular modern middlebrow novel, making it readily accessible within Western genres. Roy’s interlinear and annotated translation transcends the mere retelling of a vivid story for its unwavering emphasis on every single detail of the original, becoming a portal to the Ming past. It stands as a testament to the significance of translation as a medium for understanding the legacy of the late Ming and the socio-cultural dynamics shaping that period in Chinese history. This book will be a useful reference for scholars and research students within the fields of literary translation studies and translated Chinese literature, particularly Ming- Qing fiction. The book will also appeal to students and researchers studying Jin Ping Mei’s translation and reception in the West.