The Invention of China in Early Modern England: Spelling the Dragon (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9783030840341)

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.


Author: Jonathan E. Lux
ISBN-10: 3030840344
ISBN-13: 9783030840341
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 11/03/2022
Pages: 224
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.49d