China and the Writing of English Literary Modernity, 1690–1770

Eun Kyung Min

doi:10.1017/9781108379793

This book explores how a modern English literary identity was forged by its notions of other traditions and histories, in particular those of China. The theorizing and writing of English literary modernity took place in the midst of the famous quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. Eun Kyung Min argues that this quarrel was in part a debate about the value of Chinese culture and that a complex cultural awareness of China shaped the development of a 'national' literature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England by pushing to new limits questions of comparative cultural value and identity. Writers including Defoe, Addison, Goldsmith, and Percy wrote China into genres such as the novel, the periodical paper, the pseudo-letter in the newspaper, and anthologized collections of 'antique' English poetry, inventing new formal strategies to engage in this wide-ranging debate about what defined modern English identity.

‘… Min’s work makes a significant contribution.’

Jennifer L. Hargrave Source: Eighteenth-Century Fiction

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China and the Writing of English Literary Modernity, 1690–1770

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Contents

China and the Writing of English Literary Modernity, 1690–1770
pp i-ii

China and the Writing of English Literary Modernity, 1690–1770 - Title page
pp iii-iii

Copyright page
pp iv-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-vii

Illustrations
pp viii-viii

Acknowledgements
pp ix-xii

Introduction: China in English Literary Modernity
pp 1-14

Chapter 1 - China between the Ancients and the Moderns
pp 15-46

Chapter 2 - Robinson Crusoe and the Great Wall of China
pp 47-88

Chapter 3 - The New, Uncommon, or Strange: China in The Spectator
pp 89-124

Chapter 4 - Oliver Goldsmith’s Serial Chinaman
pp 125-163

Chapter 5 - Thomas Percy’s Chinese Miscellanies and the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
pp 164-199

Notes
pp 200-248

Bibliography
pp 249-271

Index
pp 272-278

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China and the Writing of English Literary Modernity, 1690–1770

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