The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88
Name
ebljarticle92015.pdf
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Size
690.01 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
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Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Poole, William
Date published
2015
Abstract
The earliest surviving direct correspondence of a learned nature between a Chinese person and an Englishman comprises several letters sent between May 1687 and February 1688 by a young Christian convert from Nanjing, Michael Shen Fuzong (c. 1658-1691), to the Oxonian oriental scholar and librarian Thomas Hyde (1636-1704). This correspondence had been sparked off by the visit of Shen to London in 1687 in the entourage of visiting Jesuits, and Hyde, always keen to attract native speakers of oriental languages, soon persuaded Shen to visit Oxford. This article presents the surviving letters of Shen to Hyde, in their original Latin and Chinese texts, with English translations, and also provides an extensive contextual introduction and full annotations to the letters themselves.
Journal title
Electronic British Library Journal
Volume
2015
Article number
9
Publisher
British Library
Place of publication
London, UK
eISSN
1478-0259
Official URL
Collection