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‘Mi Li’ Revisited: Horace Walpole and the Idea of China
Author(s) -
NASH PAUL
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2009.00100.x
Subject(s) - china , colonialism , girl , literature , history , context (archaeology) , first world war , classics , art , ancient history , psychology , archaeology , developmental psychology
Some time in the early 1780s Horace Walpole wrote a Chinese fairy tale to amuse himself and to entertain a young girl of his acquaintance. Named ‘Mi Li’ after its protagonist, it was printed in 1785, together with five others, under the title Hieroglyphic Tales . The tale is a satire, directed at the East India Company's pursuit of profit and Britain's transforming mercantile–colonial enterprise after the American revolutionary war. This paper represents an effort to understand ‘Mi Li’ within the context of contemporary ideas about China and English attitudes towards a wider world.