Public lecture: Dr. Wei Chen, "Early European Scholars’ Research on Chinese: A Case Study of James Summers (1828-1891) and His Works" (08.07.2024)

The Department of Sinology welcomes all students as well as everybody who is interested to the upcoming public lecture by Dr. Wei Chen (University of Malta) on "Early European Scholars’ Research on Chinese: A Case Study of James Summers (1828-1891) and His Works". The lecture will be held on July 8th (18:00 st) in room 17 (Philosophiegebäude).

Abstract

When Europeans began sailing to distant parts of the world on an unprecedented scale from the fifteenth century onwards, the vast Chinese Empire at the eastern end of the Eurasian continent became a significant destination. However, language was a crucial requirement for such exchanges, and learning and teaching a distant and distinct language like Chinese was no easy feat. This raises an important question: How did early European scholars describe and understand the features of the Chinese language compared to European languages? The works of James Summers (1828-1891), the third British professor of Chinese, will be taken as an example to illustrate this question.