Europeans first became aware of China, or Cathay, in the thirteenth century but it was only after the Portuguese opened the sea route to Asia in the early sixteenth century that China as a culture and civilisation fully impinged upon the Occidental imagination. In this course we will study how China has been interpreted and understood in English-language writing from the sixteenth century onwards. Students will study a wide selection of texts - literary, historical, travel narrative - as well as the emergence of chinoiserie in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe. The course may also consider Macao's role in the propagation of an idea of China to the Western world.

No Intended Learning Outcomes