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Lädt ... Decadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse42 | 1 | 597,391 |
(3.33) | 15 | In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bedchamber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. Published now for the first time, the controversial memoirs of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, Décadence Mandchoue, provide a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace, with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality. Backhouse was made notorious by Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1976 bestseller "Hermit of Peking," which accused Backhouse of fraudulence and forgery. This work, written shortly before the author's death in 1943, lay for decades forgotten and unpublished in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, dismissed by Trevor-Roper as nothing more than "a pornographic novelette." But Décadence Mandchoue is much more than that. Alternately shocking and lyrical, it is the masterwork of a linguistic genius; a tremendous literary achievement and a sensational account of the inner workings of the Manchu dynasty in the years before its collapse in 1911. If true, Backhouse's chronicle completely reshapes contemporary historians' understanding of the era, and provides an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate.… (mehr) |
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Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. The measureless waste of waters encompasseth them, but the merciful Raft of AVALOKITESVARA ever waiteth Ready to rescue the drowning, even midst of the sea. Sanskrit proverb Every sin, except the sin against itself, Love shall forgive: All lives, save loveless lives, True Love shall pardon. Oscar Wilde | |
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Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite. Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen. To Kuei Hua, my own Casia Flower | |
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▾Literaturhinweise Literaturhinweise zu diesem Werk aus externen Quellen. Wikipedia auf Englisch (1)▾Buchbeschreibungen In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bedchamber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. Published now for the first time, the controversial memoirs of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, Décadence Mandchoue, provide a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace, with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality. Backhouse was made notorious by Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1976 bestseller "Hermit of Peking," which accused Backhouse of fraudulence and forgery. This work, written shortly before the author's death in 1943, lay for decades forgotten and unpublished in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, dismissed by Trevor-Roper as nothing more than "a pornographic novelette." But Décadence Mandchoue is much more than that. Alternately shocking and lyrical, it is the masterwork of a linguistic genius; a tremendous literary achievement and a sensational account of the inner workings of the Manchu dynasty in the years before its collapse in 1911. If true, Backhouse's chronicle completely reshapes contemporary historians' understanding of the era, and provides an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate. ▾Bibliotheksbeschreibungen Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. ▾Beschreibung von LibraryThing-Mitgliedern
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The prose is a repository of languages, an artifice of code-switching between English, French, Chinese, including ideograms and Wade Giles Romanization, Latin, Greek, some Italian, some German, some Russian; embedded within it are quotations from Horace, Virgil, Lucretius, Confucius, Mencius, Chuangtzu, The Dream of the Red Chamber, The Book of Changes, Dante, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Buddhist sutras, and references to classical and modern European and Chinese history….
Read part 1 of this review on The Lectern
Modern critical theory asserts that a work should be judged on its own merits as a discrete, autonomous entity; or at least by situating it within a genre and looking at its relationship with other works from the genre; and that it should not be judged by how it does or does not fulfill an authorial intention – a risky concept in theoretical terms- or by how it does or does not correspond to a real truth – another risky theoretical concept.
I will argue that Decadence Mandchoue is to be regarded in its entirety as a successful work of self-conscious, deliberate literary fiction – a novel - and not as a failed work of history or autobiography. I suggest that presented with an opportunity- and a reader- by Dr Hoeppli’s kind offer, Backhouse set out to put to paper a work he had long planned in outline and detail in his mind, a work that would bring to life and preserve the artistic movement of his youth…
Backhouse’s achievement is best brought out by focusing on the first part of the title he gave his work: Decadence Mandchoue. Although it was written in 1943, the work’s whole style and atmosphere is of the 1890s, of The Yellow Book, of the Symbolists, and in particular, the Decadents. In fact, as we will see, Decadence Mandchoue has a strong claim to be regarded as one of the great Decadent masterpieces, along with Huysman’s A Rebours and Wilde’s Dorian Gray.
Read part 2 of this review on The Lectern ( )