The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600-1730 - Softcover

Markley, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521126959 ISBN 13: 9780521126953

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries China, Japan and the Spice Islands dazzled the English imagination as insatiable markets for European goods, and as vast, inexhaustible storehouses of spices and luxury wares. Robert Markley explores the significance of attitudes to the wealth and power of East Asia in rethinking conceptions of national and personal identity in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English literature. Alongside works by canonical English authors, this study examines the writings of Jesuit missionaries, Dutch merchants, and English and continental geographers, who directly contended with the challenges that China and Japan posed to visions of western cultural and technological superiority. Questioning conventional Eurocentric histories, in this 2006 book Markley examines the ways in which the writings of Milton, Dryden, Defoe and Swift deal with the complexities of a world in which England was marginalised and which, until 1800, was dominated - economically at least - by the empires of the Far East.

About this title

Review:

Review of the hardback: 'Scholarly, wide-ranging and challenging, The Far East and the English Imagination provides a nuanced account of a misrepresented area of history.' The Times Literary Supplement

Book Description:

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, China, Japan and the Spice Islands dazzled the English imagination. Questioning conventional Eurocentric histories, in this 2006 book Markley examines how Milton, Dryden, Defoe and Swift deal with the complexities of a world in which England was marginalised and which was dominated economically by the Eastern empires.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0521126959
• ISBN 13: 9780521126953
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328