13.00 sharp, Aula – Oude Lutherse kerk UvA, Singel 411, Amsterdam
Trude Dijkstra is a PhD candidate at the historic Dutch linguistics department. Her project entitled The Chinese Imprint. Printing and Publishing Chinese Religion and Philosophy in the Dutch Republic, 1595-1700 examined representations of Chinese religion and philosophy in printwork produced in the Dutch Republic between 1595 and 1700. Focusing on a variety of printed media such as books, newspapers, learned journals, and pamphlets, this study sheds new light on the representations of an often contentious subject matter to readers, and the publishing strategies of the producers. To this end, form, content, and material-technical aspects of various text types in Dutch and French are analysed to gain insights into the ways in which an early modern public of readers – who were very much divided on religious, political, economic, and linguistic fronts – could take note of Chinese religion and philosophy. Furthermore, this analysis reveals the ways this knowledge was embedded into seventeenth-century Dutch perceptions of themselves and the foreign world.
Image: Portret van Confucius in Philippe Couplet et al., Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, Parijs: Daniel Horthemels, 1687.