The Exotic Country in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns: Images of China in the Battle of the Books

Abstract

Preceded by Renaissance, followed by Enlightenment, the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, as an important cultural and intellectual event in European minds, has not received the attention it deserves. The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns which happened in 1690s England, also known as the Battle of the Books. In the battle about the superiority of ancient culture or modern culture in the West, China as an exotic country of the East was repeatedly mentioned, and in the polemical writings between Sir William Temple and William Wotton, China was given two entirely different faces: "Politically Prominent China" and "Pagan China". By analyzing the state of Chinese knowledge and the mechanism of image production in the polemical writings of British intellectuals, this paper discusses the role and ideological function played by the image of China in Enlightenment Britain, and then deliberates the construction of the British state, religious consciousness, and reflexive subject in the Early Modern period.