Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté. Image fixe : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Jenkins, Eugenia Zuroski
Titre(s) : A taste for China [Texte imprimé] : English subjectivity and the prehistory of Orientalism / Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
Publication : New York : Oxford University Press, c2013
Description matérielle : xi, 282 p. : ill. ; 25 cm
Collection : Global Asias
Lien à la collection : Global Asias
Comprend : Introduction : "China" and The Prehistory of Orientalism ; The Cosmopolitan Nation,
"Where Order in Variety We See" ; The Chinese Touchstone of the Tasteful Imagination
; Defoe's Trinkets : Fiction's Spectral Traffic ; "Nature to Advantage Drest" : The
Poetry of Subjectivity ; How Chinese Things Became Oriental ; Disenchanting China
: Orientalism and the English Novel ; Afterword : Rethinking Modern Taste.
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-271) and index
"Challenging existing narratives of the relationship between China and Europe, this
study establishes how modern English identity evolved through strategies of identifying
with rather than against China. Through an examination of England's obsession with
Chinese objects throughout the long eighteenth century, A Taste for China argues that
chinoiserie in literature and material culture played a central role in shaping emergent
conceptions of taste and subjectivity. Informed by sources as diverse as the writings
of John Locke, Alexander Pope, and Mary Wortley Montagu, Zuroski Jenkins begins with
a consideration of how literature transported cosmopolitan commercial practices into
a model of individual and collective identity. She then extends her argument to the
vibrant world of Restoration comedy-most notably the controversial The Country Wife
by William Wycherley-where Chinese objects are systematically associated with questionable
tastes and behaviors. Subsequent chapters draw on Defoe, Pope, and Swift to explore
how adventure fiction and satirical poetry use chinoiserie to construct, question,
and reimagine the dynamic relationship between people and things. The second half
of the eighteenth century sees a marked shift as English subjects anxiously seek to
separate themselves from Chinese objects. A reading of texts including Aphra Behn's
Oroonoko and Jonas Hanway's Essay on Tea shows that the enthrallment with chinoiserie
does not disappear, but is rewritten as an aristocratic perversion in midcentury literature
that prefigures modern sexuality. Ultimately, at the century's end, it is nearly disavowed
altogether, which is evinced in works like Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote and
Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. A persuasively argued and richly textured monograph
on eighteenth-century English culture, A Taste for China will interest scholars of
cultural history, thing theory, and East-West relations."--Publisher's website
Sujet(s) : Littérature anglaise -- 18e siècle
Orientalisme (littérature)
Chinois -- À l'étranger -- Dans la littérature
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780199950980 (acid-free paper). - ISBN 0199950989 (acid-free paper). - ISBN
9780199950997. - ISBN 0199950997
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb43581595j
Notice n° :
FRBNF43581595
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
