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Baroque Orientalism

Nicholas Dew

in Orientalism in Louis XIV's France

This chapter sets out the institutional and intellectual context of Orientalism in 17th-century France. The Orientalism of the 17th century was shaped by intellectual concerns and institutional ... More

This chapter sets out the institutional and intellectual context of Orientalism in 17th-century France. The Orientalism of the 17th century was shaped by intellectual concerns and institutional arrangements that differed from those of later periods. This has implications for the choice of theoretical model. The chapter surveys the literature on early modern European engagement with Asian cultures, before exploring in detail the 17th-century French setting, particularly the patronage of Oriental scholarship under Jean-Baptiste Colbert, from the 1660s on.Less

Barthélemy d'Herbelot and the Place of Oriental Learning

Nicholas Dew

in Orientalism in Louis XIV's France

This chapter follows the patronage career of the French orientalist, Barthélemy d'Herbelot (1625–1695), and uses it to further explore the institutional framework for Oriental studies in the late ... More

This chapter follows the patronage career of the French orientalist, Barthélemy d'Herbelot (1625–1695), and uses it to further explore the institutional framework for Oriental studies in the late 17th century. D'Herbelot enjoyed the patronage of the Medici grand dukes in Florence in the mid-1660s, and an attempt was made to bring him back to France. As part of Colbert's reforms of royal patronage, a ‘grande académie’ was planned, which would have included Oriental scholars. The failure of this scheme, and the subsequent movements of d'Herbelot, cast light on the ‘place’ occupied by Oriental learning in the ‘Republic of Letters’.Less

Was an Eastern Scholar Necessarily a Cultural Broker in Early Modern Europe?: Faustus Naironus (1628–1711), the Christian East, and Oriental Studies

Aurélien Girard

in Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe: An Episode in the History of the Humanities

The article examines the Evoplia fidei catholicae romanae historico-dogmatica (The Historical-dogmatic Armour of the Roman Catholic Faith), a book which was published in Rome in 1694 by a Maronite, ... More

The article examines the Evoplia fidei catholicae romanae historico-dogmatica (The Historical-dogmatic Armour of the Roman Catholic Faith), a book which was published in Rome in 1694 by a Maronite, Faustus Naironus (b. 1628, d. 1708–1712). This Eastern Christian wrote several books in his own name, and spent his entire career in Rome, but failed to enjoy much of a reputation as a scholar during his own lifetime. Published by the Congregation of Propaganda press, the Evoplia was a controversial anti-Protestant book, where Naironus presented the Syrian Christians’ contribution to the Catholic cause: according to him, Eastern Christians, regardless of their Church, adhered to the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the seven sacraments and the main dogmas. I chart the gestation of the book, and explore the reasons – some confessional, some scholarly – why this work elicited little response, both among Protestant and French Catholic scholars.Less

Judah Benzion (‘Ben’) Segal 1912–2003

Edward Ullendorff and Sebastian Brock

in Proceedings of the British Academy Volume 130, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, IV

Judah Benzion Segal (1912–2003), a Fellow of the British Academy, had a long career as a teacher of Semitic languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Segal’s ... More

Judah Benzion Segal (1912–2003), a Fellow of the British Academy, had a long career as a teacher of Semitic languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Segal’s principal interest was in Aramaic and Syriac, in addition to Hebrew and the other main Semitic tongues. Before his teaching career, he was employed in the Sudan Civil Service and, during World War II, his service was frequently behind the enemy lines in North Africa. He was educated at Magdalen College School, University of Oxford, and at St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge. One of Segal’s other abiding interests concerned the Jews of Cochin whose history he published in 1993. But it will probably be in the area of Aramaic studies that Segal will be best remembered in the academic world.Less

Oedipus in Rome

Daniel Stolzenberg

in Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity

This chapter covers Kircher's return to Rome from Malta in 1638. Kircher was eager to return to the unfinished edition of the Coptic-Arabic lexicon and his ever-expanding hieroglyphic studies, and as ... More

This chapter covers Kircher's return to Rome from Malta in 1638. Kircher was eager to return to the unfinished edition of the Coptic-Arabic lexicon and his ever-expanding hieroglyphic studies, and as he brought both projects to completion in the following years, he encountered numerous obstacles. He overcame these obstacles only with the assistance of new and powerful patrons, and by harnessing the exceptional resources that made Rome a vital center of scholarship, especially in the fields of antiquarian and Oriental studies. Kircher's investigations of Egypt and the hieroglyphs, culminating in the monumental Egyptian Oedipus, were products of a network of institutions, collections, and individuals centered in Rome and extending throughout Europe and the world.Less

Polyglot Forms

Seth Kimmel

in Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain

Expanding the insights of the religious reformer and linguist Juan de Valdés, the Morisco Ignacio de Las Casas and his fellow Jesuits recognized that lived contact produced linguistic fluency and ... More

Expanding the insights of the religious reformer and linguist Juan de Valdés, the Morisco Ignacio de Las Casas and his fellow Jesuits recognized that lived contact produced linguistic fluency and Christian faith. The first half of this chapter shows how the Jesuits and others laboring on the internal and external frontiers of Christianity balanced coercion and accommodation in their cultivation of second language fluency and New Christian orthodoxy. The second half of the chapter examines the role of sixteenth-century Christian Hebraists in the transformation of peninsular Arabic study and comparative philology. By trafficking in an Arabic intended for display, decoration, and easy translation, polymaths like Benito Arias Montano, Fray Luis de León, and Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas put their somewhat limited Arabic knowledge to use as markers of a new kind of professional expertise in Salamanca and other centers of peninsular scholarship. The crucial epistemological distinction between form and content first emerged as a strategy to cultivate communication with recent converts while safeguarding against the accusation of heresy. Over time, however, it matured into a powerful instrument of intellectual inquiry, particularly among the community of pastoral linguists and comparative philologists who helped shape the nascent field of Oriental studies.Less

Epilogue

Nicholas Dew

in Orientalism in Louis XIV's France

The Epilogue draws together the themes of the preceding chapters, and offers concluding remarks. It is organized around the story of the philosopher G. W. Leibniz's attempts to verify Jesuit accounts ... More

The Epilogue draws together the themes of the preceding chapters, and offers concluding remarks. It is organized around the story of the philosopher G. W. Leibniz's attempts to verify Jesuit accounts of the Nestorian Christian monument in China (the Sigan-Fu stone) by searching for a medieval Arabic travel text which was rumoured to offer independent evidence of the stone's existence. The case reveals both the uses and the limitations of the antiquarian approach to Oriental studies.Less

‘London is blacker than lacquer’

Anne Witchard

in Lao She in London

The cultural and social climate to which Lao She would respond in Er Ma was one both of hidebound retrenchment and outward-looking optimism, the latter thanks to the efforts of Binyon, Waley, and ... More

The cultural and social climate to which Lao She would respond in Er Ma was one both of hidebound retrenchment and outward-looking optimism, the latter thanks to the efforts of Binyon, Waley, and Pound, and a growing awareness of alternate aesthetic traditions that had begun to challenge the assumptions of British ruling culture. With the scholar, Clement Egerton, Lao She worked on a translation of the Ming dynasty masterpiece, Jin ping mei, published as The Golden Lotus (1939). The virtuosity of Jin Ping Mei's unknown author has recently been compared with the Dickens of Bleak House, the Joyce of Ulysses, and the Nabokov of Lolita. Until the canonization of modernist technique, the qualities of Chinese narrative fiction, namely the carnivalesque, the surreal, irony, parody, pluralistic viewpoints and irresolution or open-ended conclusions, were judged to be shortcomings or limitations by the tenets of objective realism. Working on the translation of Jin ping mei while devouring the newly published works of Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Huxley, and Woolf, Lao She was uniquely positioned to appreciate the formal significance of Chinese literary style and the qualitiesthat were beginning to be explored by Western writers in theirrejection of the dominant tradition of mimetic realism.Less

Orientalism and the Permanent Fix of War

Siraj Ahmed

in The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory

This chapter reiterates that the Company’s early Orientalists confound ideas about the ‘imperial project’, suggesting that 18th-century British India contained possibilities different from those of ... More

This chapter reiterates that the Company’s early Orientalists confound ideas about the ‘imperial project’, suggesting that 18th-century British India contained possibilities different from those of the centuries that followed. The most influential of these Orientalists was Sir William Jones, arguably the most commanding scholar whom Oriental studies has yet produced, the master of languages and the supposed origin of tendencies and even disciplines in the comparative study of culture. This chapter also implies that 18th-century British Orientalism’s chief aim and achievement was to provide a textual basis for Indian law in a form that would become absolutely seminal for the subsequent development of Indian history and historiography.Less

Transferring Jewish Knowledge: F.A. Brockhaus as a Publisher of Judaica and Orientalia

Arndt Engelhardt

in Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures

One of the best-known publications of the publishing house founded by Salman Schocken is the series known as Schocken-Bücherei (Schocken Library), published in Germany between 1933 and 1938. This ... More

One of the best-known publications of the publishing house founded by Salman Schocken is the series known as Schocken-Bücherei (Schocken Library), published in Germany between 1933 and 1938. This series comprised 83 volumes on Jewish history and culture dating from antiquity until the modern era, including works by such disparate figures as Philo of Alexandria, Maimonides, Heinrich Heine, and Franz Kafka. The reasonably priced volumes had average sales of 4,000–5,000 copies, with the most popular works selling up to 10,000 copies: this was the most successful series put out by Schocken. At a time when the rights of Jews in Germany were being curtailed and Jews were being expelled from German culture, ...Less

Professor Johnston (1930–1935)

Shiona Airlie

in Scottish Mandarin: The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston

Sir Reginald Johnston was initially in a relationship with Eileen Power, yet unfortunately their engagement was finally dissolved by Eileen. Thanks to his in-depth knowledge of China's affairs, he ... More

Sir Reginald Johnston was initially in a relationship with Eileen Power, yet unfortunately their engagement was finally dissolved by Eileen. Thanks to his in-depth knowledge of China's affairs, he was later appointed to the Chair of Chinese at the University of London's School of Oriental Studies. After having a long academic vacation in China, he returned to London to take up his post as professor. Also he managed to maintain strong bonds with Puyi, Japan's puppet ruler at that time. Johnston's support for Puyi was in fact made evident in his book Twilight in the Forbidden City, and he turned into a minor celebrity as his story reached a mass audience. At the end of the 1934–35 academic session, he offered to retire, and decided to make a pilgrimage to Manchuria and visit Puyi.Less

The School of Oriental and African Studies

Angela Penrose

in No Ordinary Woman: The Life of Edith Penrose

This chapter covers the period 1960–78. A readership in economics with reference to the Middle East at the London School of Economics and School of Oriental and African Studies was followed in 1964 ... More

This chapter covers the period 1960–78. A readership in economics with reference to the Middle East at the London School of Economics and School of Oriental and African Studies was followed in 1964 by taking up the first chair of economics with special reference to Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Edith developed the new department and co-founded the Journal of Development Studies. She travelled extensively, particularly in the Middle East, where she taught and advised at the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo. In 1978, with E. F. Penrose, she published Iraq: International Relations and National Development, a comprehensive study of the political and economic development of the state of Iraq. She contributed to public bodies including the British Social Science Research Council and the Overseas Development Institute, the Commonwealth Development Corporation, the Monopolies Commission, and the Sainsbury Committee.Less

Oriental Studies and Current Affairs of Sikhism

J.P.S. Uberoi

Khalid Tyabji (ed.)

in Mind and Society: From Indian Studies to General Sociology

This chapter consists of four short pieces concerning Sikhism which serve as a pretext for an analysis of Sikh studies, both foreign and Indian. It includes an outline of the main tenets of the ... More

This chapter consists of four short pieces concerning Sikhism which serve as a pretext for an analysis of Sikh studies, both foreign and Indian. It includes an outline of the main tenets of the Orientalist and Indian area studies approaches to Sikh religion and history and raises questions about the nature of Sikhism and Sikh Raj in the unity and diversity of current ‘secular’ India and the relationship between the institutions of civil society and the state. The discussion is both historical and contemporary leading up to the moment preceding Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh guards. Fundamental to the discussion is the idea and concept of Indian modernity and the place of a plurality of religions within it.Less

The Academic Study of Arabic in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century Protestant Germany: A Preliminary Sketch*

Asaph Ben-Tov

in History of Universities: Volume XXVIII/2

This chapter surveys Arabic studies by seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Protestant scholars in Germany. It shows that the main interest of these scholars lay with oriental texts. They had no ... More

This chapter surveys Arabic studies by seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Protestant scholars in Germany. It shows that the main interest of these scholars lay with oriental texts. They had no real concern for the Near East as a region where millions of their fellow humans lived—their souls awaiting salvation through Christian mission, or, for the more mundanely inclined, their merchandise offering to fill European coffers. The pious protestations these scholars made, that knowledge of Arabic and of Islam were necessary for an effective Christian mission, were not followed by any real concern for such an undertaking.Less