Chronology Entry
Year
1768
Text
Coyer, [Gabriel François]. Chinki, histoire cochinchinoise [ID D20156].
Basil Guy : Coyer's knowledge of the Far East, where Cochin-China and China were for him identical. We realize how flimsy is the structure to which Coyer has attached the physiocrats' ideas. "Tous les jours quand il quittait son travail, il lisait quelque livre d'agriculture, les lois simples ou l'histoire de son pays, et la morale de Confucius. Il ne demandait au 'Tien' que la continuation de son bonheur." The author is free to imitate thos imitators of Montesquieu who, whroughout the century had not ceased to use this approach for criticism of any and every foible, any and every abuse. More particularly does he echo the early work of Guérineau de Saint-Péravi, who had attemted to criticize city life and ways from an economic point of view with L'optique [ID D20157] in much the same fashion as would Coyer. In almost all of the succeeding incidents by which Coyer intended to unmask the fatuity and incompetence of the guilds and their members, the whole system an obstacle to the sort of progressive reform which the physiocrats were advocating, there is nothing truly Chinese. Indeed, the frequent repetition of the hero's complaint 'maudit, métier, maudite maîtrise' is more reminiscent of the French comic tradition than of anything from the Orient. By just such unintentional, yet purely Occidental, evocations, Coyer then resorts to tham overemphasis which the physiocrats were attempting to live down and fails, while this novelistic tract falls into the worst sort of eighteenth-century moralizing, characterized at the end by the grace accorded Chinki when the king 'sentit que le premier besoin de l'Etat était que tout le monde pût vivre. Il en vit nettement les moyens dans l'agriculture, les arts et le commerce'.
Basil Guy : Coyer's knowledge of the Far East, where Cochin-China and China were for him identical. We realize how flimsy is the structure to which Coyer has attached the physiocrats' ideas. "Tous les jours quand il quittait son travail, il lisait quelque livre d'agriculture, les lois simples ou l'histoire de son pays, et la morale de Confucius. Il ne demandait au 'Tien' que la continuation de son bonheur." The author is free to imitate thos imitators of Montesquieu who, whroughout the century had not ceased to use this approach for criticism of any and every foible, any and every abuse. More particularly does he echo the early work of Guérineau de Saint-Péravi, who had attemted to criticize city life and ways from an economic point of view with L'optique [ID D20157] in much the same fashion as would Coyer. In almost all of the succeeding incidents by which Coyer intended to unmask the fatuity and incompetence of the guilds and their members, the whole system an obstacle to the sort of progressive reform which the physiocrats were advocating, there is nothing truly Chinese. Indeed, the frequent repetition of the hero's complaint 'maudit, métier, maudite maîtrise' is more reminiscent of the French comic tradition than of anything from the Orient. By just such unintentional, yet purely Occidental, evocations, Coyer then resorts to tham overemphasis which the physiocrats were attempting to live down and fails, while this novelistic tract falls into the worst sort of eighteenth-century moralizing, characterized at the end by the grace accorded Chinki when the king 'sentit que le premier besoin de l'Etat était que tout le monde pût vivre. Il en vit nettement les moyens dans l'agriculture, les arts et le commerce'.
Subjects
Literature : Occident : France