Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Defining Cultural Exchange: Of Gender, the Power of Definition, and the Long Road Home
- From Text to Body: The Changing Image of “Chinese Teachers” in Eighteenth-Century German Literature
- “Was findest Du darinne, das nicht mit der allerstrengsten Vernunft übereinkomme?”: Islam as Natural Theology in Lessing's Writings and in the Enlightenment
- The Nordic Turn in German Literature
- Cultural Exchange in the Travel Writing of Friedrich Stolberg
- Aneignung, Verpflanzung, Zirkulation: Johann Gottfried Herders Konzeption des interkulturellen Austauschs
- “Wandeln an der Grenze”: Trapper und andere hybride Charaktere in der deutschsprachigen Amerikaliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts
- “Sprechen wir wie in Texas”: American Influence and the Idea of America in the Weimar Republic
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: The Utopia of Cultural Blending in Wolfgang Koeppen's Tauben im Gras
- Colonial Legacies and Cross-Cultural Experience: The African Voice in Contemporary German Literature
- Anatolian Childhoods: Becoming Woman in Özdamar's Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei and Zaimoğlu's Leyla
- “Kanacke her, Almanci hin. […] Ich war ein Kreuzberger”: Berlin in Contemporary Turkish-German Literature
From Text to Body: The Changing Image of “Chinese Teachers” in Eighteenth-Century German Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Defining Cultural Exchange: Of Gender, the Power of Definition, and the Long Road Home
- From Text to Body: The Changing Image of “Chinese Teachers” in Eighteenth-Century German Literature
- “Was findest Du darinne, das nicht mit der allerstrengsten Vernunft übereinkomme?”: Islam as Natural Theology in Lessing's Writings and in the Enlightenment
- The Nordic Turn in German Literature
- Cultural Exchange in the Travel Writing of Friedrich Stolberg
- Aneignung, Verpflanzung, Zirkulation: Johann Gottfried Herders Konzeption des interkulturellen Austauschs
- “Wandeln an der Grenze”: Trapper und andere hybride Charaktere in der deutschsprachigen Amerikaliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts
- “Sprechen wir wie in Texas”: American Influence and the Idea of America in the Weimar Republic
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: The Utopia of Cultural Blending in Wolfgang Koeppen's Tauben im Gras
- Colonial Legacies and Cross-Cultural Experience: The African Voice in Contemporary German Literature
- Anatolian Childhoods: Becoming Woman in Özdamar's Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei and Zaimoğlu's Leyla
- “Kanacke her, Almanci hin. […] Ich war ein Kreuzberger”: Berlin in Contemporary Turkish-German Literature
Summary
THE PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION of China in eighteenth-century German literature and philosophy is marked by a transformation that unfolded in parallel with a larger epistemic shift: in the course of the eighteenth century, the biblical text, hitherto the central point of reference in human thought and action, gave way to the body as an organizing principle. Since the last quarter of the eighteenth century, metaphors and images of human individuality and community have been molded on the physical, physiological, and psychological unity of human corporeality. Similarly, since then, representations of cultural alterity and cross-cultural contact have relied on images of Self and Other. For the greater part of the eighteenth century, however, writing alterity was a far more contested process. This essay proposes therefore to lay bare some of the transitions and transformations that occurred in the representations of China between 1716 and 1796. These representations presume a notion of Chinese moral or ethical superiority which often triggers the introduction of a teacher-like figure who becomes the legitimate critic of European fallacies, behaviors, and politics. In each instance, this figure condenses the underlying epistemological constellations of the time, that is, the tension between text and body.
Leibniz and Wolff
At the threshold between the Baroque and the early Enlightenment, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679– 1754) interpreted China as a culture modeled on ancient philosophy and historical texts.
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- Information
- Edinburgh German Yearbook 1Cultural Exchange in German Literature, pp. 27 - 44Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007