Anne Witchard (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748690954
- eISBN:
- 9781474422185
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690954.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This volume examines the ways in which an intellectual vogue for a mythic China was a constituent element of British Modernism. Traditionally defined as a decorative style that conjured a fanciful ...
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This volume examines the ways in which an intellectual vogue for a mythic China was a constituent element of British Modernism. Traditionally defined as a decorative style that conjured a fanciful and idealized notion of China, chinoiserie was revived in London's avant-garde circles, the Bloomsbury group, the Vorticists and others, who like their eighteenth-century forebears, turned to China as a cultural and aesthetic utopia. As part of Modernism's challenge to the 'universality' of so-called Western values and aesthetics, the turn to China would contribute much more than has been acknowledged to Modernist thinking. As the book demonstrates, China as an intellectual and aesthetic utopia dazzled intellectuals and aesthetes, while at the same time the consumption of Chinese exoticism became commercialized. The essays cover performance and visual media, theatre, fashion, film and dance, interior and garden design, as well as literature, painting and poetry, showing that from cutting-edge Modernist chic to mass culture and consumer products, the vogue for chinoiserie style and motifs permeated the art and design of the period.Less
This volume examines the ways in which an intellectual vogue for a mythic China was a constituent element of British Modernism. Traditionally defined as a decorative style that conjured a fanciful and idealized notion of China, chinoiserie was revived in London's avant-garde circles, the Bloomsbury group, the Vorticists and others, who like their eighteenth-century forebears, turned to China as a cultural and aesthetic utopia. As part of Modernism's challenge to the 'universality' of so-called Western values and aesthetics, the turn to China would contribute much more than has been acknowledged to Modernist thinking. As the book demonstrates, China as an intellectual and aesthetic utopia dazzled intellectuals and aesthetes, while at the same time the consumption of Chinese exoticism became commercialized. The essays cover performance and visual media, theatre, fashion, film and dance, interior and garden design, as well as literature, painting and poetry, showing that from cutting-edge Modernist chic to mass culture and consumer products, the vogue for chinoiserie style and motifs permeated the art and design of the period.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
A Taste for China offers an account of how literature of the long eighteenth century generated a model of English selfhood dependent on figures of China. It shows how various genres of ...
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A Taste for China offers an account of how literature of the long eighteenth century generated a model of English selfhood dependent on figures of China. It shows how various genres of writing in this period call upon “things Chinese” to define the tasteful English subject of modernity. Chinoiserie is no mere exotic curiosity in this culture, but a potent, multivalent sign of England’s participation in a cosmopolitan world order. By the end of the eighteenth century, not only are English homes filled with it, but so too are English selves. Literature’s gradual insistence that things Chinese are incompatible with English identity is part of a strategy for organizing this imaginary material as part of modern subjectivity. Orientalism does not inform the literary incorporation of China into English self-definition, but is instead one of its most lasting effects.Less
A Taste for China offers an account of how literature of the long eighteenth century generated a model of English selfhood dependent on figures of China. It shows how various genres of writing in this period call upon “things Chinese” to define the tasteful English subject of modernity. Chinoiserie is no mere exotic curiosity in this culture, but a potent, multivalent sign of England’s participation in a cosmopolitan world order. By the end of the eighteenth century, not only are English homes filled with it, but so too are English selves. Literature’s gradual insistence that things Chinese are incompatible with English identity is part of a strategy for organizing this imaginary material as part of modern subjectivity. Orientalism does not inform the literary incorporation of China into English self-definition, but is instead one of its most lasting effects.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
Provides an overview of the book’s argument and defines key terms—including China, chinoiserie, orientalism, and prehistory—in the context of a literary critical framework.
Provides an overview of the book’s argument and defines key terms—including China, chinoiserie, orientalism, and prehistory—in the context of a literary critical framework.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
English literature of the early eighteenth century revised notions of identity based on inherited property and status, emphasizing instead a new kind of Englishness based on participation in global ...
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English literature of the early eighteenth century revised notions of identity based on inherited property and status, emphasizing instead a new kind of Englishness based on participation in global commerce. The Lockean model of subjectivity, which insisted on experience as the foundation of selfhood, laid the foundation for a version of English selfhood capable of internalizing variety and diversity. Things Chinese serve as the measure of the modern English subject’s cosmopolitanism.Less
English literature of the early eighteenth century revised notions of identity based on inherited property and status, emphasizing instead a new kind of Englishness based on participation in global commerce. The Lockean model of subjectivity, which insisted on experience as the foundation of selfhood, laid the foundation for a version of English selfhood capable of internalizing variety and diversity. Things Chinese serve as the measure of the modern English subject’s cosmopolitanism.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
Chinoiserie objects including furniture, porcelain, and tea appear in English writing from the Restoration through the early eighteenth century; over this period, they are recategorized from exotic ...
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Chinoiserie objects including furniture, porcelain, and tea appear in English writing from the Restoration through the early eighteenth century; over this period, they are recategorized from exotic curiosities to culturally privileged markers of English taste. While Restoration comedies exploit china’s hold on the English imagination for laughs, periodicals such as the Spectator and Tatler use things Chinese to identify and regulate the exercise of taste and imagination.Less
Chinoiserie objects including furniture, porcelain, and tea appear in English writing from the Restoration through the early eighteenth century; over this period, they are recategorized from exotic curiosities to culturally privileged markers of English taste. While Restoration comedies exploit china’s hold on the English imagination for laughs, periodicals such as the Spectator and Tatler use things Chinese to identify and regulate the exercise of taste and imagination.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
The dressing-room poems of Pope and Swift put English women and Chinese things in mutually defining relationships to one another, introducing a model of subjectivity founded on the accumulation of ...
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The dressing-room poems of Pope and Swift put English women and Chinese things in mutually defining relationships to one another, introducing a model of subjectivity founded on the accumulation of and aesthetic arrangement of material objects as part of the self. While Pope’s verse constructs a female subject defined by her symbiotic relationship to Chinese things, Swift’s dismantles this subject, and along with it the reigning paradigm of aesthetic self-management.Less
The dressing-room poems of Pope and Swift put English women and Chinese things in mutually defining relationships to one another, introducing a model of subjectivity founded on the accumulation of and aesthetic arrangement of material objects as part of the self. While Pope’s verse constructs a female subject defined by her symbiotic relationship to Chinese things, Swift’s dismantles this subject, and along with it the reigning paradigm of aesthetic self-management.
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199950980
- eISBN:
- 9780199345991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199950980.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, World Literature
In the late eighteenth century, the “realistic novel” claims to represent English life more accurately than other forms of fiction. It makes this claim by systematically disavowing the enthrallment ...
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In the late eighteenth century, the “realistic novel” claims to represent English life more accurately than other forms of fiction. It makes this claim by systematically disavowing the enthrallment with Chinese objects that characterize “oriental” fiction and earlier versions of English culture. By “disenchanting” things Chinese, the novels of Jane Austen introduce a model of subjectivity organized around the policing of subject-object relations, the orientalist distinction between East and West, and the progression from childhood to maturity.Less
In the late eighteenth century, the “realistic novel” claims to represent English life more accurately than other forms of fiction. It makes this claim by systematically disavowing the enthrallment with Chinese objects that characterize “oriental” fiction and earlier versions of English culture. By “disenchanting” things Chinese, the novels of Jane Austen introduce a model of subjectivity organized around the policing of subject-object relations, the orientalist distinction between East and West, and the progression from childhood to maturity.
Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814738399
- eISBN:
- 9780814745250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814738399.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter presents the account of Danny Chen, a Chinese American soldier who decided to commit suicide after being subjected by his fellow soldiers to demeaning and physically painful acts. Chen's ...
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This chapter presents the account of Danny Chen, a Chinese American soldier who decided to commit suicide after being subjected by his fellow soldiers to demeaning and physically painful acts. Chen's family sought justice, but the military jury acquitted the soldiers who subjected Danny to inhumane acts. The chapter then juxtaposes this case with Chinoiserie, which stages a practice of justice that functions not through the negation of the law but by using performance to disassemble and repurpose the objects of the law in order to make reparation for Chinese America. The play does not simply disavow the law and culture of the United States, but also draws them inward in order to assemble and repair Chinese American history into “something like a whole.”Less
This chapter presents the account of Danny Chen, a Chinese American soldier who decided to commit suicide after being subjected by his fellow soldiers to demeaning and physically painful acts. Chen's family sought justice, but the military jury acquitted the soldiers who subjected Danny to inhumane acts. The chapter then juxtaposes this case with Chinoiserie, which stages a practice of justice that functions not through the negation of the law but by using performance to disassemble and repurpose the objects of the law in order to make reparation for Chinese America. The play does not simply disavow the law and culture of the United States, but also draws them inward in order to assemble and repair Chinese American history into “something like a whole.”
