China Gothic

China Gothic
Author: Anthony E. Clark
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295746688

As China struggled to redefine itself at the turn of the twentieth century, nationalism, religion, and material culture intertwined in revealing ways. This phenomenon is evident in the twin biographies of North China’s leading Catholic bishop of the time, Alphonse Favier (1837–1905), and the Beitang cathedral, epicenter of the Roman Catholic mission in China through incarnations that began in 1701. After its relocation and reconstruction under Favier’s supervision, the cathedral—and Favier—miraculously survived a two-month siege in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. Featuring a French Gothic Revival design augmented by Chinese dragon–shaped gargoyles, marble balustrades in the style of Daoist and Buddhist temples, and other Chinese aesthetic flourishes, Beitang remains an icon of Sino-Western interaction. Anthony Clark draws on archival materials from the Vatican and collections in France, Italy, China, Poland, and the United States to trace the prominent role of French architecture in introducing Western culture and Catholicism to China. A principal device was the aesthetic imagined by the Gothic Revival movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the premier example of this in China being the Beitang cathedral. Bishop Favier’s biography is a lens through which to examine Western missionaries’ role in colonial endeavors and their complex relationship with the Chinese communities in which they lived and worked.

Global Gothic

Global Gothic
Author: Barbara Borngässer
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-02-17
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9462703043

Gothic style and contemporary architecture worldwide Although largely overlooked in studies of architectural history, church architecture in a Gothic idiom outlived its 19th century momentum to persist worldwide throughout the 20th century and into the new millennium. Global Gothic presents a first systematic worldwide understanding of "Gothic" in contemporary architecture, both as a distinct variation and as a competitor to recognized modern styles. The book’s chapters critically discuss Gothic’s various manifestations over the past century, describing and illustrating approaches from Gothic Revival living traditions in the former British Empire and original Gothic appropriation in Latin America to competitions of European builders in former Asian and African colonies. The focus is also on the special appropriations in North America, China and Japan, as well as contemporary solutions that tend to be transnational in style. With contributions from renowned architecture experts from around the world, Global Gothic provides an overview of this cultural phenomenon and presents a wealth of stunning material, much of it little known. Richly illustrated in full color, it offers an important contribution to colonial and postcolonial global art history and a seldom acknowledged perspective on art history in general. Contributors: Barbara Borngässer (Technische Universität Dresden), Martín M. Checa-Artasu (Metropolitan Autonomous University, Mexico City), Thomas Coomans (KU Leuven), Pedro Guedes (University of Queensland), Bruno Klein (Technische Universität Dresden), Bettina Marten (Technische Universität Dresden), Olimpia Niglio (Hosei University Tokyo), Peter Scriver (University of Adelaide), Amit Srivastava (University of Adelaide) This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Bone China

Bone China
Author: Laura Purcell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2020-04-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1526602504

A Daphne Du Maurier-esque chiller set on the mysterious Cornish coast, from the award-winning author of The Silent Companions.'Du Maurier-tastic' GUARDIAN'Deliciously sinister' HEAT 'A clever, creepy read' SUNDAY EXPRESS Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home. Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past, but she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last...Laura Purcell's spine-chilling new novel, The Shape of Darkness, is out now!

Asian Gothic

Asian Gothic
Author: Andrew Hock Soon Ng
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2008-02-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786433353

The essays in this collection acknowledge the rich Gothic tradition in Asian narratives that deal with themes of the fantastic, the macabre, and the spectral. Through close analyses of Asian works using the theoretical framework outlined by Gothic criticism, these essays seek to expand the notion of the Gothic to include several popular Asian works. Broadly divided into essays on postcolonial Asian Gothic, Asian-American Gothic, and the Gothic writings of specific Asian nations, this volume covers a wide variety of Asian texts. The essays of Part One demonstrate the flexibility of Postcolonial Gothic literature in adopting divergent or even contradictory ideologies. Part Two evokes the Gothic as the theoretical framework from which to interrogate the writings of Asian-American authors Maxine Hong Kingston, Sky Lee, lě thi diem thuy and David Henry Hwang. Part Three studies the Gothic tradition in the national literatures of China, Japan, Korea, and Turkey.

The Shape of Darkness

The Shape of Darkness
Author: Laura Purcell
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525507205

Edgar Award Finalist A struggling silhouette artist in Victorian Bath seeks out a renowned child spirit medium in order to speak to the dead - and to try and identify their killers - in this beguiling new tale from the queen of Gothic fiction, Laura Purcell As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another... Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business? Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them. But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back.

China and Historical Capitalism

China and Historical Capitalism
Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2002-09-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521525916

This book addresses the historical relationship that has arisen between the concept of capitalism and the idea of China. Formulated by European intellectuals in order to identify the social formation in which they found themselves, capitalism was portrayed as unique to Europe and as an organic outgrowth of Western civilization. In this way, China was rejected as a model of civilization, and seen merely as despotic, feudal or stagnant. This Eurocentric judgement has hung over all subsequent thinking about China, even influencing Chinese perceptions of their own history. The aim of this collaborative project is to examine how the experience of capitalism as a European social formation and as a world-system has shaped knowledge of China. In addition the volume aims to establish new foundations on which a theory of Chinese society might be built, in order to perceive and understand Chinese development in less Eurocentric terms.

Chinese Myths & Tales

Chinese Myths & Tales
Author:
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2018-12-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1787552640

Curated new Myths and Tales. Great floods and river Gods, snake spirits, and Immortals, China's unique set of mythological tales are derived from its vast expanse, diverse culture and the endless wars between tribes and dynasties. The result is a rich landscape of humanity, gods and spirits introduced here in this comprehensive book of folk tales and legendary exploits. The latest title in Flame Tree's beautiful, comprehensive series of Gothic Fantasy titles, concentrates on the ancient, epic origins of modern fantasy.

China's Old Churches

China's Old Churches
Author: Alan Richard Sweeten
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2019-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004416188

China’s Old Churches, by Alan Sweeten, surveys the history of Catholicism in China (1600 to the present) as reflected by the location, style, and details of sacred structures in three crucial areas of north China. Closely examined are the most famous and important churches in the urban settings of Beijing and Tianjin, as well as lesser-known ones in rural Hebei Province. Missionaries built Western-looking churches to make a broad religious statement important to themselves and Chinese worshippers. Non-Catholics, however, tended to see churches as sociopolitically foreign and culturally invasive. The physical-visual impact of church buildings is significant. Today, restored old churches and new sacred structures are still mostly of Western style, but often include a sacred grotto dedicated to Our Lady of China--a growing number of Catholics supporting Marian-centered activities.

China’s Last Jesuit

China’s Last Jesuit
Author: Amanda C. R. Clark
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2017-07-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9811050236

This pivot chronicles the life of Charles McCarthy, a San Francisco native and Jesuit missionary to China, and tells the unique and compelling story of a young man who experienced confinement under the Japanese occupation, followed shortly by imprisonment by the Chinese Communists in the 1950’s. Through a study of McCarthy’s unique epistolary exchanges, it considers the intellectual life of a Catholic missionary, his ongoing fight for equal citizenship rights, illustrating how American Catholic missionaries in Maoist-era Shanghai navigated the social tensions of a nation-state in turbulent transition. This narrative explores Jesuit strategies of resistance and persistence in an era of oppression, and ideological and religious conflict as those sent to fill the missionary spots left by European men lost in the World Wars were caught up in China’s mid-century political upheavals.