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MISSIONARIES (MIS-)REPRESENTING CHINA: ORIENTALISM, RELIGION, AND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF VICTORIAN CULTURAL IDENTITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Isaac Yue
Isaac Yue*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
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Extract

In Sartor Resartus (1831), Thomas Carlyle wrote that “the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of everything” (129; bk. 2, ch. 7). At the time, this statement was no exaggeration because, as the nineteenth century dawned, Christianity was inarguably perceived by many as one of the most definitive components of Britishness; as Jane Austen's Henry Tilney says: “Remember that we are English, that we are Christians” (172, vol. 2, ch. 9). The sense of being a Christian represents a fundamentally important ideal to the conceptualization of Victorian cultural identity in that it not only dictated to society an imaginary concept of identity after which the Victorian civilization tried to pattern itself, but also led to the manifestation of cultural ideologies such as the ambiguously defined Victorian virtue and work ethic. However, in order for the ideology of cultural identity to function, a specific set of institutional forms would be required to provide society with a firm foundation for the process of “cultural elaboration” to take place. Thus, alongside the early Victorians' belief in their self-professed faith, Orientalism represents another of the more important Victorian cultural institutional forms, which complemented the concept of Christianity to create a sense of moralistic connection, and in turn allowed the manifestation of Victorian cultural identity as a rigidly moralistic and virtuous entity that was perceived by many early Victorians as a true reflection of their society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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