“Westward to the Orient : the specter of scientific China in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis” (Publication, 2009)
Year
2009
Text
Gwee, Li Sui. Westward to the Orient : the specter of scientific China in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. In : The English Renaissance, Orientalism, and the idea of Asia. Debra Johanyak, Walter S.H. Lim, eds. (Houndmills, Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). (Baco2)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Bacon, Francis
(London 1561-1626 Highgate bei London) : Philosoph, Jurist, Historiker, Schriftsteller, Politiker
Subjects
Philosophy : Europe : Great Britain
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (1)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1626 |
Bacon, Francis. New Atlantis [ID D26978]. [Enthält Eintragungen über China]. Mögliche Quellen : [Polo, Marco]. The most noble and famous trauels of Marcus Paulus [ID D26973]. Gonzáles de Mendoza, Juan. Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China [ID D1627]. Er schreibt : "We sailed from Peru, where we had continued by the space of one whole year, for China and Japan, by the South Sea, taking with us victuals for twelve months; and had good winds from the east, though soft and weak, for five months' space and more. " "Toward the east the shipping of Egypt and of Palestine was likewise great. China also, and the great Atlantis, (that you call America,) which have now but junks and canoes, abounded then in tall ships. This island, (as appeareth by faithful registers of those times,) had then fifteen hundred strong ships, of great content. Of all this, there is with you sparing memory, or none; but we have large knowledge thereof. At that time, this land was known and frequented by the ships and vessels of all the nations before named. And (as it cometh to pass) they had many times men of other countries, that were no sailors, that came with them; as Persians, Chaldeans, Arabians; so as almost all nations of might and fame resorted hither; of whom we have some stirps, and little tribes with us at this day. And for our own ships, they went sundry voyages, as well to your straits, which you call the Pillars of Hercules, as to other parts in the Atlantic and Mediterrane Seas; as to Paguin, (which is the same with Cambaline,) and Quinzy, upon the Oriental Seas, as far as to the borders of the East Tartary." "It is true, the like law against the admission of strangers without license is an ancient law in the Kingdom of China, and yet continued in use. But there it is a poor thing; and hath made them a curious, ignorant, fearful, foolish nation. But our lawgiver made his law of another temper." "Now for our travelling from hence into parts abroad, our lawgiver thought fit altogether to restrain it. So is it not in China. For the Chinese sail where they will, or can ; which showeth, that their law of keeping out strangers is a law of pusillanimity and fear. But this restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable ; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt: and I will now open it to you." "We have burials in several earths, where we put divers cements, as the Chinese do their porcelain. But we have them in greater variety, and some of them more fine. We also have great variety of composts and soils, for the making of the earth fruitful." Gwee, Li Sui. Westward to the Orient : the specter of scientific China in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis [ID D26972]. Chinese longevity was the basis for Bacon's fantasy of an enduring cultural alternative aligned with the West and reframed his adventure 'beyond both the old world and the new' as more than a metaphor in its desire to encroach upon the known sphere of Chinese socioeconomic influence. By depicting China as still polarized three thousand years ago between Quinzy and cambaline, or Manzian Hangchow and Tartar Peking, Bacon's grossest error was hardly his depiction of Peking as a sea-port, a notion possibly derived from John Mandeville's Voyages de Johan de Mandeville chevalier [ID D10209]. Rather, he revealed that the only Middle Kingdom he cared about was either recent or unchanging since Bensalem's age-old familiarity with China did not translate into a knowledge of its contours prior to the Yuan or Mongol dynasty of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His siting of Cathay and China as one and the same terrain further did away with a geographical indeterminacy that could not have been resolved before the clarifications of Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Bento de Gois, around the turn of the seventeenth century. These points fix the span of what Bacon knew about China firmly within the circulated narratives from Marco Polo's visit to the Orient. Although the Spanish threat was real, immediate, and textually noticeable, Bacon's greater instinct lay in his recognition of China's more enduring rivalry, this clarifying his actual contribution as an international socioeconomic outlook. His depictions of Spain and China bore tellingly distinct shapes of cultural Otherness : unlike Spanish dominance, Chinese superiority was not so much vilified, opposed, and negated as admired on all terms except those with regard to morality and an unframed scientific diversity. Bacon's use of fiction to secure a vantage point that could obscure the West's real limitations, weaken its cultural inertia, and shift the epicenter of its engagements stressed not just his individual originality but also the factor of neurosis arising from his anxiety over a truly inassimilable Other that seemed to undermine or overwhelm it. This ironic creative reliance on an agon challenges the common assumption that Bacon chose the mode of travel-writing for its inherent empirical rigor and highlights his likelier understanding that the leading travelogues then tended to, in the words of Robert Parke's printer, 'extoll their owne actions, even to the setting forth of many vntruthes and incredible things'. |
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Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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