Speaker: Dr . Donald Stone The City University of New York Peking University

1. 人文社會高等研究院 外國語文學系 Speaker: Dr. Donald Stone The City University of New York Peking University Moderator: Dr. Carol Ku(National Taiwan University) Time: Thursday November 18, 2010, 15:30-17:00 pm Venue: DFLL New Conference Room (舊總圖會議室) (a.k.a. Old Main Library Conference Room) China appeared, to Europeans of the Middle Ages, a land of incredible wealth, “the greatest realm of the world”(according to Sir John Mandeville), whose leader, the great Khan, was “themost mighty emperor of the world.” Visitors to China, from Marco Polo to Lord McCartney, described lavish palaces and splendid gardens. Western merchants imported porcelains, textiles,and lacquerware which dazzled the royalty of Europe. Based on their descriptions, Chinese palaces and pagodas sprang up all over Europe. Meanwhile, local artisans created what theyimagined to be Chinese artifacts, the beautiful and sometimes bizarre artworks known as “Chino series.”  However, it was probably in the visual arts--in the paintings and decorations of Watteau, Boucher, Whistler, Victor Hugo, among others--that Chinoiseriesproduced its greatest legacy. Among the works to be surveyed are sumptuous ancient illustrations to Marco Polo's "Livre des Merveilles"; beautiful paintings, tapestries, prints, and drawings by great European artists.  From the accounts of European visitors to China (especially the Jesuits), China was also deemed by seventeenth and eighteenth century western writers to be a land of good governmentand natural reason, qualities whichLeibniz, Voltaire, and Goldsmith found lacking in their own countries. “We need missionaries from the Chinese,” Leibniz argued, “to teach us those things which are especially in our interest: the greatest use of practical philosophy and a more perfect way of living.”  From Goethe and Coleridge to Yeats and Pound, we can see how the image of Chinainspired many great western writers. About the speaker: Donald Stone, Professor Emeritus at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, is also visiting professor in the English Department of Peking University. He received degrees from UC Berkeley (BA) and Harvard (MA and PhD). He has been visiting professor at Harvard, New York University, and Capital Normal University (Beijing). He has lectured everywhere in China and the West. In 1991 he was visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Science. Among his awards was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. His many publications include Novelists in a Changing World and The Romantic Impulse in Victorian Fiction (both published by Harvard University Press), and Communications with the Future: Matthew Arnold in Dialogue (University of Michigan Press). He has recently written the chapter on Henry James for the New Cambridge History of Literary Criticism.