Emotions of Transcultural Encounters: a Study of Eighteenth-Century Western Discourse about Chinese Gardens

Abstract

The early modern period marked an era of more frequent contact between Europe and China, leading to cultural exchange that generated intellectual challenges for Western and Chinese scholars alike. This article highlights one aspect of this transcultural encounter by employing a history of emotions approach to examine ways that eighteenth-century European writers engaged with Chinese garden design. Through the works of writers who had not travelled to China, such as Joseph Addison and Claude-Henri Watelet, as well as of others who had actually experienced Chinese gardens firsthand, including Matteo Ripa, Jean-Denis Attiret, and William Chambers, this study explores how emotions served as a medium of cultural translation and played a crucial role in imagining the Other, as well as in negotiating foreignness, ultimately lending familiarity to what was otherwise radically unfamiliar. In this light, discourse around gardens, which are spaces abound with emotional practices, can offer unique insights into the emotional dynamics of early modern cross-cultural encounters