Bøger udgivet af Peter Lang GmbH

The contributions in this volume examine literary and other texts as well as cultural and political discourses in relation to issues of identity formation and dis-formation, of self and society and of the socially local within the global. All these issues come into play through the exploration of the fantasmatic space of mutual mis-recognition and mythmaking between coloniser and colonised, between ¿Africä and ¿Europe¿.

This is an intellectual biography of the early life and missionary career of James Legge (1815-1897), a monumental figure in 19 century European sinology. In the first volume details about Legge¿s family, religious setting, and educational experiences in northeastern Scotland are shown to anchor his intellectual interests, shaping his later religious transformation and commitment to Chinese missionary work. The trials, adjustments and initial missionary strategies of the Legge family¿s first years in Malacca and the new colony of Hongkong (1840-1848) bring this volume to a close. In the second volume the flourishing of Legge¿s missionary scholarship is cast in the context of his application of «principles» of Scottish Nonconformism and Scottish realist philosophy to many unexpected aspects of the Hongkong and Chinese contexts. While his sinological scholarship has weathered more than a century of criticism and neglect, Legge¿s unexpected emergence into roles as a Scottish Nonconformist prophet and counter-cultural folk hero in Hongkong reveal new dimensions of Protestant missions in China which challenge standard Orientalist interpretations of cultural imperialism.