Chinese Literature and Culture in the World: The Early Period

Luca, Dinu

This detailed, chronological study investigates the rise of the European fascination with the Chinese language up to 1615. By meticulously investigating a wide range of primary sources, Dinu Luca identifies a rhetorical continuum uniting the land of the Seres, Cathay, and China in a tropology of silence, vision, and writing. Tracing the contours of this tropology, The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period offers close readings of language-related contexts in works by classical authors, medieval travelers, and Renaissance cosmographers, as well as various merchants, wanderers, and missionaries, both notable and lesser-known. What emerges is a clear and comprehensive understanding of early European ideas about the Chinese language and writing system.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2016-08-20

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9781137512253

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-50291-9

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 242