Exemplary Sodomites: Chivalry and Love in Late Ming Culture

NAN Nü ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Vitiello
Keyword(s):  
Male Friendship ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Ming Fiction

AbstractThis essay explores the ideological allegiances between the chivalric (xia) and the romantic (qing) in late Ming fiction and culture. Focusing on notions of friendship and love between men and their role in the formation of the late Ming romantic ideal, it also discusses the discourse on sodomy articulated in two treatises on male friendship by the Jesuit missionaries Matteo Ricci and Martino Martini, and the hypothesis of a late Ming homoerotic fashion.

scholarly journals The Perils of Accommodation: Jesuit Missionary Strategies in the Early Modern World

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-414
Author(s):  
Andrés I. Prieto
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jose De Acosta ◽  
Christian Message

The notion of accommodation, or the adaptation of one’s message to one’s audience, has been regarded as a central feature of the Jesuit way of proceeding at least since the seventeenth century. In recent years, scholars have come to understand accommodation as a rhetorical principle, which—while rooted in the rules of classical oratory—permeated all the works and ministries performed by the Jesuits of the Old Society. By comparing the theoretical notions about accommodation and the advantages and risks of adapting both the Christian message to native cultures and vice versa, this paper shows how and under what conditions the Jesuit missionaries were able to translate this rhetorical principle into a proselytizing praxis. By focusing on the examples of José de Acosta in Peru, Matteo Ricci in China, and of those Jesuits working in the missions in Paraguay and Chile, this essay will show how the needs in the missionary field superseded and overruled the theoretical requirements set beforehand. They revealed the ways in which the political and cultural context in which the missionaries operated determined the negotiations needed in order to achieve a common ground with their would-be converts if their mission was going to happen at all.

A Study of Giulio Aleni's Chih-fang wai chi

1977 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Hung-kay Luk
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
The World ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Renaissance Cartography ◽  
Considerable Body

There exists a considerable body of scholarly literature on the contributions of the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the knowledge of geography in China. Much of this literature is centred around the world maps of Matteo Ricci. Studies have been made on the different editions of these maps, on the sources of information (both European and Chinese) that Ricci must have used, on the reception by the Chinese literati of Ricci's time of the maps and the world-view represented by them, and on the possible influence of Renaissance cartography on Chinese map-making. Writers differ on the importance and utility of these maps and their influence.

A Friendship of Metal and Stone: Representations of Fan Juqing and Zhang Yuanbo in the Ming Dynasty

NAN Nü ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-145
Author(s):  
Kimberly Besio
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Dramatic Literature ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Male Friendship ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

AbstractThis essay examines representation of male friendship in Ming vernacular literature through an analysis of works that retell the story of two late Han friends, Fan Juqing and Zhang Yuanbo. Throughout the Ming, versions of the tale were produced in a variety of literary genres including a zaju play and a vernacular short story. Both the drama and the short story are extant in multiple editions, providing us insights into how they were interpreted by various literati editors. The durability of the friendship between Fan and Zhang—an essential aspect in all depictions of their story—is vividly evoked by the phrase that characterizes their relationship in dramatic literature: "a friendship of metal and stone." The late Ming editions of the play and the short story underline the two friends' unbending commitment to their friendship through a variety of textual and paratextual additions and emendations. In the hands of these late Ming literati editors the two friends Fan and Zhang thus become heroic figures worthy of eternal respect.

About God, Demons, and Miracles: the Jesuit Discourse On the Supernatural in Late Ming China

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Western Science ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Cultural Accommodation ◽  
Religious Cult ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Conventional Paradigm

AbstractThis paper proposes an alternative to the conventional paradigm of "cultural accommodation" as a key to the understanding of the Jesuit scheme of conversion in late Ming China. It challenges one of the corollaries of that paradigm, which holds that because of the paramount rationalist sensibilities of the Confucian élite, the Jesuit missionaries refrained from speaking about the mysteries and supernatural truths of Christianity. In this paper, it is instead argued that the Jesuits, rather than trying to cultivate a rational spirit in China, were primarily engaged in fashioning a new religious cult(ure) which centered upon the supreme efficacy of the Christian faith in exorcising demons and performing miracles and was of central importance to the religious conquest of territories formerly held by their indigenous rivals. It is further shown that it is this preoccupation at the same time motivated and delimited the Jesuits' campaign against Chinese religions and the introduction of Western science and learning and resulted in the application of double standards and in ambiguities and contradictions in their scientific writings.

scholarly journals The Westerner: Matteo Ricci’s World Map and the Quandaries of European Identity in the Late Ming Dynasty

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Florin-Stefan Morar
Keyword(s):  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Ming Dynasty ◽  
The Late Ming Dynasty ◽  
New Interpretation

Beginning with the late Ming dynasty, Europeans in China assumed the name of “people from the Great Western Ocean” (Daxiyang ren 大西洋人), often shortened to “Ocean people” (yang ren 洋人) or “Western people” (xi ren 西人). What is the origin of this name? This paper seeks to answer this question by suggesting a new interpretation of the cartography of Matteo Ricci. Much of the scholarly debate about the Ricci world map revolves around the notion that it was a scientific artifact meant to present an accurate image of the world to a willfully ignorant, but otherwise impressive civilization. This paper argues instead that the purpose of Ricci’s cartographic project was to sustain a new identity, that of the Westerner and of the “Great West,” notions created in translation by borrowing and modifying Ming China’s geopolitical vocabulary.

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