Dreaming of China in Eighteenth-Century France
* 본 문서는 배포용으로 복사 및 편집이 불가합니다.
서지정보
ㆍ발행기관 : 서강대학교 철학연구소
ㆍ수록지정보 : 철학논집
ㆍ저자명 : Anne Marie Mercier Faivre
ㆍ저자명 : Anne Marie Mercier Faivre
목차
TalesNovels : The Chinese Spy
Theatre
The press
영어 초록
In eighteenth-century France, knowledge of the Far East improves whilestill remaining fragmentary and incomplete. The Jesuits' Lettres édifiantes
et curieuses (Edifying and Curious Letters), and especially the great work
by one of their members, Fr Du Halde, Description de la Chine
(Description of China), 1735, contribute to the advance of knowledge, and
the number of works on China and Japan grows constantly over the
century, as can be seen in the tables of two periodicals, the Année and
the Mémoires de Trévoux, which give a wide circulation to summaries of
these texts.
Here is a significant continuity in this mass of material, which often
extends a type of thought dating back to the previous century. What is at
stake in treating the subject changes, however, in the eighteenth century.
The Far East is no longer the prerogative of erudite circles but is used to
provide an entire society with a critical scrutiny of Western institutions. In
a sense, this tendency contributes to masking Asian realities rather than
unveiling them.
Montesquieu's Persian becomes Chinese for Voltaire (and later Indian).
De la gloire, ou Entretien avec un Chinois (Of Glory, or A Conversation
with a Chinaman), 1741, invites the French to relativize their ideas on
civilization, religion and history, while the Dictionnaire philosophique
(Philosophical Dictionary) uses the Chinese to criticize the Catholic
religion. Later, Ange Goudar's L'Espion chinois (The Chinese Spy), 1773,
is written in the same critical vein: inspired by Montesquieu's Persian
Letters and Goldsmith's Chinese Letters, 1762, it represents a violent
attack on Western society, its political régime and social organization. In
the area of political or religious reflection, the Chinese world often seems
like an almost Utopian model, heightening the denunciation of Europe as
corrupt and in thrall to absurd traditions.
The Far East, if it is used above all in the context of largely religious
and historical thought, also provides the matter to re-examine all of
Western art over the century: literature, theatre, music, painting, gardens.
Some examples will be studied, notably in the press, the theatre and the
novel, with the aim of identifying the stereotypes present in these texts
and of determining whether literature looks as favorably on the Orient as
does philosophy.