Chinese & European Takeaways: An Annotated Bibliography

My working thesis that is more of an abstract and a little redundant... Help anyone?

Taken by Nicole Harvey using Canon Powershot S110 on 11/9/2012 

Postcolonial reading has come under recent criticism as modern innovations have made other cultures more accessible and comparable to our own. Robert Markley has been one of its main critics. Markley's main argument in his second chapter of The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600-1730 is that postcolonial criticism of 17th century authors like Milton has been too narrow and has made assumptions about things that are not factual. Namely, it has taken for granted the "fact" that England has not only been the supreme historic power, but also that the English have all historically viewed themselves in this way. He debunks this assumption first by naming statistics supporting China as a more civilized nation at the time English colonization and second by citing Englishmen at the time who lobbied in Parliament to emulate China's model of government. He claims it is our Anglocentricity that prevents our acknowledging either the influence of these other powers or the threat the English felt at Asia's political and religious power. In other words, Markley believes postcolonial reading and our Anglocentricity assumes the difference between England and China is in favor of England while the truth was the complete opposite. I would like to state that it is Markley's own Anglocentricity that prevents his ability to acknowledge the similarities between Milton's work and Far Eastern culture. It is these similarities that reconcile long-debated contradictions throughout pieces like Paradise Lost.

Universal similarities change with circumstance and time. One universalistic norm that existed at the time Milton was writing was a value placed on what our culture now condemns and terms the "passive." After WWII, our culture changed while China remained the same in this regard, making our Anglocentric reading of Paradise Lost imperfect and biased. By reading Milton in Eastern thought, or valuing the passive, we eliminate some of the things our modern, Anglocentric view mistakenly assumes about Milton's culture. By using this reading, we find new insight into the definition of power studied by the postcolonial critics Markley criticizes.

Here's a list of sources I've found useful (or want to soon utilize):

Seeing Through the Mist of Eurocentricity: Oriental Influence in Paradise Lost

After searching for hours, I was awed to find a miracle: Robert Markley wrote a book titled The Far East and English Imagination, 1600-1730 published 2006. In the book there is a chapter named "China and the limits of Eurocentric history: Milton, the Jesuits, and the Jews of Kaifeng." What?! Turns out Markley is the recent expert on Chinese relations with 17th century literary England. There have been at least two other scholars that have referred to his works and two more that have written reviews of the book. This conversation is still fairly new and I'm excited to be a part of it.

Part of what has been said is that the Western world has been hopelessly Eurocentric in its view of the historic world which inhibited its view of how things were at the time. Our view of the world has seen England as the great power when really it paled in comparison to China. He also has claimed that because of Milton's view on the Jesuits preaching in China, Milton was decidedly at odds with everything we now deem as other in oriental culture.

My working thesis is this:

Our projection of Eurocentricity and Americentricity onto Milton's culture has caused us to have the mistaken impression that Milton was more at odds with oriental ideals than he actually was. Even in Markley's critique of Milton's Eurocentricity, he is himself Eurocentric.

Following are some of my claims:

There are pieces of 17th century England (or at least Miltonian ideals) that shared viewpoints with 17th century, ancient, and current Chinese culture. (God and the Son's "passivity," Satan's "activity," there are many ways to say/see one thing, putting the most important thing at the end of the sentence, masculine emulation of our current "feminine.")
Postcolonialism England is blind to its negative influence as a power. Eurocentric England is blind to other powers' positive influences. (Delft and Gardens all came from China.)

Milton was against Jesuits preaching because of his non-Jesuit sentimentalities, not fear of pagan/Chinese assimilation.

Milton had no qualms using pagan doctrine to prove Christian points. It seems very unlikely he would be unsettled by Christian "assimilation," especially after his idealism of China in referring to Christ's second coming in Book XI referring to China as "the seat,/ Of mightiest empire, from the destined walls/ Of Cambalu" (XI 386-388).

Chinese Citizen Milton

Although I was skeptical at first, I was unable to shake some of the connections between modern Chinese culture and ideas persistent in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Some of the similarities include his ideas about knowledge, heroism, power, and gender roles. Many of these topics seem contradictory when reading it from a modern American culture perspective. For example, the fact that Satan is so active and Christ is so passive seems at odds with our ideas of power. Milton has fallen under much gender role criticism because Eve seems inferior by our American standards, but after a little study I've found a few interesting things:

The Power of the Feminine and the Power of the Moon: Eastern Thought in Eden

We've talked about the idea of passivity being the superior trait to dominance. This is a hard concept for our minds to grasp and is at the center of many gender debates right now. Passivity often characterized as a very feminine characteristics and is much less desirable than dominance. However, it seems like all the glorified characters in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are as dominant as they are evil. They dominate the books in regards to time and initiation of events. Satan is active. He makes stuff happen! He fights against God, he traverses Chaos. On the other hand, God and Christ are both very reactive and seem to have very little screen time. The GREATEST STORY OF ALL is Christ's reaction to Satan.

One thing that our culture does to throw a wrench in the works or make this seem contradictory is relate greatness to dominance. If, however, we read using the Eastern theories of power, things are easily reconcilable. Take, for example, some popular quotes from Taoist literature:

“The hard and mighty lie beneath the ground
While the tender and weak dance on the breeze above.”
― Lao Tzu

“The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

Probably the most interesting reading I did this week was from the book The Chinese National Character: From Nationhood to Individuality. In it is addressed the idea that since WWII, American men have fought hard against the idea of relativism and passivity because they defined it as feminine. "In America, the immediate postwar era witnessed a censure of relativism, especially cultural relativism in anthropology, and the rise of a more affirmative attitude toward Western values vis-a-vis the totalitarianism of the Eastern Bloc." Other cultures, including the Chinese culture, do not see it that way. "Our Chinese colleagues objected strenuously whenever the word 'passivity' was used in connection with the Chinese preferences for a life of contemplation." In the eyes of the Chinese, it is the "passive" things (or "feminine" as defined by American ideals) that define success. For example, being well-read and scholarly is often in the form of memorizing poetry and learning languages. Good health is defined by eating light, not necessarily working out. Exercise is walking and badminton not lifting weight. In China, these are ideas of power. Perhaps reading Milton as a modern American inhibits our view of him and the real view of power. Power is less like dominion and more like vulnerability. It is the power to feel, the power to influence. It is the power of the feminine and the power of the moon.

{ambituity} Absolute Truth is Absolute Ignorance

One major critique of Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained brings up the seeming contradiction between Milton's advocacy of free speech and circulation of knowledge and Raphael's charge to be "lowly wise" or Christ's assertion that he has come as an "inward oracle / To all truth requisite for men to know" asserting that there is only a certain amount of truth men should know, putting this text under much criticism. This contradiction can be resolved, however, if we look at Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained with the Chinese understanding of knowledge.

In most western societies, we see knowledge and truth as something absolute finite. Once obtained, it's something to be declared and shared through speech. As illustration, we have idioms like the following:

• know the ropes 
• can't make heads or tails of it 
• under one's belt 
• know something backwards and forwards

In Chinese cultures however, knowledge is extraordinarily relative and ambiguous. Because of that, it is not shared with what you say, but how you live or what you feel. They have idioms such as the following:

• 口說無憑 Words can't be taken as evidence.
• 信口開河 If you believe in words, you open a river of destruction.
• 心直口快 If your heart is straight, your mouth will be fast (or you will say what you have to in few words).
• 知足常樂 To know is enough to make one happy.
• 不知所措 The root of all mistakes is not knowing.

Or perhaps the most fascinating one with the story attached:

My Humanist Excercise

So, one of the ways John Milton used to learn about literature and language was that he would take poems and other pieces and translate them into another language, sit on them for a couple days, then translate them back. This would increase understanding not only of the foreign language, but would also give a new light to the content being translated. So, in the spirit of Renaissance Pedagogy, I took it upon myself to translate the first 6 lines of Paradise Lost into Chinese. Just for reference, here is the original:

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing heavenly muse,

 (I know what you must be thinking "6 whole lines, careful there," but it's a lot more time-consuming than I expected!) Here is the Chinese:

知道是只道

To Know is the Only Way

(Zhidao shi zhidao)

Reading recently about Western perception of the Fall and Western roots for the word "knowledge" has been really eye opening. One thing we've talked about is that the Latin word, sapere, "to know" also means "to taste." We see this relevant in all sorts of Latin-based languages like French where the word "savoir" (to know) is so closely related to "saveur" (to savor or taste). Having recently come from a very different language, I wondered if there would be any connections between the two ideas in Chinese. While I found some similarites in the connotations of words regarding knowledge, there were some stark contrasts I'd like to bring to light.

As a background, for those of you not familiar with Chinese, each word is made up of one or two characters. Each character is given one syllable and has it's own meaning.  Each character, however, can be made up of many symbols (or radicals) each with its own, respective meaning. Let's look at the word "good."

The blue radical is the character for "woman," the red one means "man." When together, the word means "good," which makes literal the statement in Genesis 2:18 "It is not good for man to be alone."

There have been whole studies about the Chinese characters associated with the Fall. Believe it or not, the most commonly used characters nearly all have ties to the book of Genesis (examples include "man," "want," "west," "first," "talk," "create," and so many more). One that hadn't been researched, but that I'd like to pick apart for you is the character for "knowledge."

丿+天+口 = 知

In this case, the blue radical means "to throw away," the gray, "heaven," the red "mouth." All three together mean "knowledge." Knowledge is what you get after you throw away heaven by tasting the fruit. And if you throw the character for "day"  日 in there, you get this: 

智

which means "wisdom." Genesis 2:17 "For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Perhaps it would have been wiser for Adam and Eve to heed this counsel? Or was it wiser for them to throw heaven away for this knowledge?

知者不言,言者不知. 

Those who know don't speak, those who speak don't know.

For those of you interested in seeing more characters with Christian origins, I highly recommend this PowerPoint.