The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds
by Jonathan D. Spence
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"Jonathan Spence, our foremost historian of Chinese politics and culture, tells us in his new book how the West has understood China over seven centuries. Ranging from Marco Polo's own depiction of China and the mighty Khan, Kublai, in the 1270s to the China sightings of three twentieth-century writers of acknowledged genius - Kafka, Borges, and Calvino - Spence explores Western thought on China through a remarkable array of expression." "Peopling Spence's account are Iberian adventurers, show more the great Jesuit missionaries, Enlightenment synthesizers including Voltaire and Montesquieu, spinners of the dreamy cult of Chinoiserie, American observers such as Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Ezra Pound, and Eugene O'Neill, and diplomats from Britain's Lord Macartney to Henry Kissinger. Their visions are alternately coarse and subtle, generous and vicious, sober and exotic. Taken together they tell us as much about the self-image of the West as about China."--Jacket show lessTags
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How the West has seen China over seven centuries, by one of the foremost Sinologists of our times.
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27+ Works 7,138 Members
Jonathan D. Spence was born in Surrey, England on August 11, 1936. He received a B.A. in history from Clare College, Cambridge University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. As a historian specializing in Chinese history, he wrote several books including The Search show more for Modern China, The Death of Woman Wang, and The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. The Gate of Heavenly Peace won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Henry D. Vursell Memorial Award of the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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