from Part V - World Cultures Inspiration and Reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2024
Chapter 29 centres on Goethe’s idea of China. Goethe was initially ambivalent, even condescending, about Chinese culture and aesthetics, but in later years, this attitude was replaced by a greater degree of interest in the country. This chapter explores the evolution of Goethe’s position on China, beginning with the eighteenth-century fashion for chinoiserie and Goethe’s disparagement of it; it then considers Goethe’s more open-minded engagement with Chinese literature in translation towards the end of his life, noting at the same time the gulf between Goethe’s source material and China’s most representative cultural outputs.
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