The Idealized Image Of China In G.L.Dickinson's Writings

In Letters from John Chinaman written in 1901,the British writer Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson created an idealized image of China which contrasted with the West represented by Britain.In his writings about the Eastern travel in 1912-1913,he generally maintained this idealized view of China.This thesis applies Daniel-Henri Pageaux's theory of imagology in comparative literature and takes Letters from John Chinaman as the main research case to study Dickinson's creation of an idealized image of China and to explore the cultural mentality of the image-creator.Chapter one is dedicated to sort out the image of China in terms of the country China and of the Chinese nation based on the textual analysis of Letters and argues that China in this text is in essence an imagined oriental utopia.The country China,spatially speaking,is poetically depicted as an idyllic paradise isolated from the outside chaos;economically and politically,it is constructed as a serene land marked by self-sufficiency and stability.Culturally,the Chinese nation epitomized by John Chinaman,as committed adherents of Confucianism,are idealistically portrayed as the most civilized and peaceable people.Chapters two and three,taking Dickinson's writings about the travel into account,explores the motives behind his idealization of China based on the discussion of how his Chinese image interacts with the Western stereotypes about the Orient and China.Chapter two considers that both the imagined China in Letters and the recorded China in his travel notes are reminiscent of the past and that the past-oriented Chinese image is projected with his bittersweet nostalgia for the delightfully aesthetic but painfully unrecoverable Self.Chapter three discusses that Dickinson's Chinese image challenges the then prevalent negative stereotypes about China constructed by the West:oriental despotism,brutal John Chinaman,and Yellow Peril.It then goes further to explore his intention to rectify the Self corrupted by materialism and imperialism embodied in his illuminating image of China as the civilized and peaceable Other.