Introduction: Entering the Language Continuum -- 1. Silence, Script, and “New Understandings” -- 2. Figures, Hieroglyphs, and Ciphers -- 3. Ships, Bricks, and the Majesty of Writing: The New Century -- Conclusion.

"This detailed, chronological study investigates the rise of the European fascination with the Chinese language up to 1615. By meticulously investigating a wide range of primary sources, Dinu Luca identifies a rhetorical continuum uniting the land of the Seres, Cathay, and China in a tropology of silence, vision, and writing. Tracing the contours of this tropology, The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period offers close readings of language-related contexts in works by classical authors, medieval travelers, and Renaissance cosmographers, as well as various merchants, wanderers, and missionaries, both notable and lesser-known. What emerges is a clear and comprehensive understanding of early European ideas about the Chinese language and writing system."--Publisher note.

Local access dig.pdf. [Luca-Chinese language European texts.pdf]

Introduction. China as exemplar: Eastern spectacle and Western discourses of virtue -- 1. Heroic effeminacy and the conquest of China -- 2. Sincerity and authenticity : George Psalmanazar's experiments in conversion -- 3. Transmigration, fabulous pedagogy, and the morals of the Orient -- 4. Luxury, moral sentiment, and The orphan of China -- Epilogue: Orientalism, globalization, and the new business of spectacle.