The Cyclical Nature of the Images of China in Western Travel Writing
The Cyclical Nature of the Images of China in Western Travel Writing

Summary/Abstract: Scholars who study the mages of China produced in Western travel writing throughout history, have noticed that their ‘nature’ is cyclical. Individual variability aside, there are powerful cultural and economic factors that influence Western writers and stimulate them to produce images which – sometimes unbeknownst to the writers themselves – follow an imagological pattern, characteristic of the particular historical period. It is not coincidental that the Western imagological tradition – as it relates to China – is sometimes divided into separate periods, according to the general Western disposition towards the Middle Kingdom – the period of reverence, the period of contempt, the period of benevolence etc. The present paper explores and provides examples of this cyclicity.

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