The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England

A major study of eighteenth-century cultural history and the history of contact and exchange between China and the West.

David Porter (Author)

9780521192996, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 November 2010

242 pages
24.9 x 18 x 1.3 cm, 0.59 kg

'Historians of eighteenth-century English material culture and its influences have been well served by this erudite and fascinating take on a topic we thought we knew well.' Britain and the World: Historical Journal of The British Scholar Society

Eighteenth-century consumers in Britain, living in an increasingly globalised world, were infatuated with exotic Chinese and Chinese-styled goods, art and decorative objects. However, they were also often troubled by the alien aesthetic sensibility these goods embodied. This ambivalence figures centrally in the period's experience of China and of contact with foreign countries and cultures more generally. In this book, David Porter analyses the processes by which Chinese aesthetic ideas were assimilated within English culture. Through case studies of individual figures, including William Hogarth and Horace Walpole, and broader reflections on cross-cultural interaction, Porter's readings develop interpretations of eighteenth-century ideas of luxury, consumption, gender, taste and aesthetic nationalism. Illustrated with many examples of Chinese and Chinese-inspired objects and art, this is a major contribution to eighteenth-century cultural history and to the history of contact and exchange between China and the West.

Introduction. Monstrous beauty
Part I. China and the Aesthetics of Exoticism: 1. Eighteenth-century fashion and the aesthetics of the Chinese taste
2. Cross-cultural aesthetics in William Chambers' Chinese Garden
Part II. What Do Women Want?: 3. Gendered Utopias in transcultural context
4. William Hogarth and the gendering of Chinese exoticism
Part III. Of Rocks, Gardens, and Goldfish: 5. The socio-aesthetics of the Scholar's Stone
6. Horace Walpole and the Gothic repudiation of Chinoiserie
Part IV. China and the Invention of Englishness: 7. Chinaware and the evolution of a modern domestic ideal
8. Thomas Percy's Sinology and the origins of English Romanticism
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature & literary studies [D], Art styles not defined by date [ACB], The arts [A]