Image Of China In Robert Van Gulik’s Judge Dee Mysteries

The medium of the last century witnessed a great series of detective novel JudgeDee Mysteries came out. The world-known Chinese-styled collection includingsixteen novels and eight short stories is written by Robert Hans van Gulik, a commonDutch diplomat and distinguished sinologist specializing on Chinese culture andancient civilization. An encounter with a Chinese crime story created in the Qingdynasty inspired the foreigner to translate the book and wrote his China-backgroundwestern-typed fictions. Since the work was published, it has got success on Chineseinternational image construction and correction of negative knowledge about China insome westerners’ mind. As an oriental cultural lover, the author put his understandingand awareness into the creation, which showcased myriad social silhouettes in ancientChina, people of all walks of life, Chinese costumes and institutions, etc. As abeginner of the subject comparative literature and world literature, the writer of thethesis will adopt the relative theories involving image study to interpret Gulik’s JudgeDee stories. Limited by my academic capability and inadequate time, I will selectsome parts to analyze the cause or the relationship hidden in it through certainmethods.