Britain's Chinese Eye

Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British, Nonfiction, History
Cover of the book Britain's Chinese Eye by Elizabeth Chang, Stanford University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Elizabeth Chang ISBN: 9780804775878
Publisher: Stanford University Press Publication: April 20, 2010
Imprint: Stanford University Press Language: English
Author: Elizabeth Chang
ISBN: 9780804775878
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Publication: April 20, 2010
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Language: English

This book traces the intimate connections between Britain and China throughout the nineteenth century and argues for China's central impact on the British visual imagination. Chang brings together an unusual group of primary sources to investigate how nineteenth-century Britons looked at and represented Chinese people, places, and things, and how, in the process, ethnographic, geographic, and aesthetic representations of China shaped British writers' and artists' vision of their own lives and experiences. For many Britons, China was much more than a geographical location; it was also a way of seeing and being seen that could be either embraced as creative inspiration or rejected as contagious influence. In both cases, the idea of China's visual difference stood in negative contrast to Britain's evolving sense of the visual and literary real. To better grasp what Romantic and Victorian writers, artists, and architects were doing at home, we must also understand the foreign "objects" found in their midst and what they were looking at abroad.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

This book traces the intimate connections between Britain and China throughout the nineteenth century and argues for China's central impact on the British visual imagination. Chang brings together an unusual group of primary sources to investigate how nineteenth-century Britons looked at and represented Chinese people, places, and things, and how, in the process, ethnographic, geographic, and aesthetic representations of China shaped British writers' and artists' vision of their own lives and experiences. For many Britons, China was much more than a geographical location; it was also a way of seeing and being seen that could be either embraced as creative inspiration or rejected as contagious influence. In both cases, the idea of China's visual difference stood in negative contrast to Britain's evolving sense of the visual and literary real. To better grasp what Romantic and Victorian writers, artists, and architects were doing at home, we must also understand the foreign "objects" found in their midst and what they were looking at abroad.

More books from Stanford University Press

Cover of the book Testing the Limit by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Broke and Patriotic by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book The Power of Representation by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book The Fire and the Tale by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book To Sin No More by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Popular Democracy by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book A Genealogy of Dissent by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Imagining Harmony by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Selling under the Swastika by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book The Off-Screen by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Woman Lawyer by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Shorelines by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight by Elizabeth Chang
Cover of the book Is There a Middle East? by Elizabeth Chang
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy