What was the cultural impact of early meetings between Chinese and Europeans? This book explores visual, literary, and scholarly representations of the Celestial Empire and Western countries against the backdrop of actual encounters. Based on rare Chinese and, correspondingly, European (especially Dutch) sources and archival documents, the volume covers a range of cultural expressions from the applied arts to philosophy. Special attention goes to the ideals and realities of trade and diplomacy of the Dutch East India Company in China. Foreign Devils and Philosophers approaches global history from a cultural perspective and illuminates the reciprocal dynamic of aversion and admiration: Chinese and Westerners could appear as sages or savages in each other's eyes.

This book is the long awaited third volume in a series that provides a comprehensive comparative history of the humanities. This installment turns to the modern period, from 1850 to 2000, bringing together specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, archaeology, and literary theory to explore the intertwining nature of these various disciplines, and how together they make up the broader investigative project of the humanities.

Samuel van Hoogstraten was not only one of Rembrandt's most succesful pupils and a versatile painter. His experiments in optical illusion also attracted the interest of the natural scientists of his time. Furthermore, he wrote some of the first Dutch novels, plays, and a treatise on painting. After travelling to Rome, Vienna, and London he introduced European courtiers' manners in the Low Countries.[-] In this book, a collective of specialists with different backgrounds sheds light on the facets of Van Hoogstraten's work that demonstrates in a unique manner how art, literature, and science were interrelated in the Dutch Golden Age. The contributors devote special attention to his theory of art and his literary writings, the role of paintings in his social network, his contacts in Italy and Britain, and finally the art of his master, Rembrandt. Bringing to the fore hitherto unknown works and highlighting new connections between word and image, the book is an important contribution to our understanding of Van Hoogstraten's universal art and its implications for Early Modern cultural history.

While it is clear that around 1800 the humanities as a discipline rose to prominence, it is less clear what the exact nature of this shift in academia was. Was it a sudden revolution caused by a momentary but powerful change in the zeitgeist or the turning point of a much longer process? In this volume, the editors have selected a series of essays that look at the origins of the humanities and find that long before 1800 the concept of the humanities was already at the fore. The shift around 1800 was thus mostly institutional, not theoretical. "The Making of the Humanities "traces this new finding through a broad range of disciplines including literary theory, linguistics, art history, and musicology.

This book is the first step towards the development of a comparative history of the humanities. Specialists in philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, literary theory, and other disciplines highlight the intertwining of the various fields and their impact on the sciences. This first volume in the series The Making of the Humanities focuses on the early modern period. Different perspectives reveal how the humanities developed from the 'liberal arts', via the curriculum of humanistic schools, to modern disciplines. The authors show in particular how discoveries in the humanities contributed to a secular world view, pointing up connections with the scientific revolution. The main themes are: the humanities versus the sciences; the visual arts as liberal arts; humanism and heresy; language and poetics; linguists and logicians; philology and philosophy; the history of history. Contributions come from a selection of internationally renowned European and American scholars, including Floris Cohen, David Cram, and Ingrid Rowland. The book offers a wealth of insights for specialists, students, and those interested in the humanities in a broad sense.