Abstract
Nicolas Standaert
Professor of Sinology
University of Leuven (Belgium)
Between Text and Commentaries:
Chinese and European Stories about Marvelous Births
This presentation will propose an early case of “intercultural historiography,” i.e. a way of
writing history in which the interaction with another culture is an integral part of the
historiographical process. It focusses on the ways Chinese and European authors of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries interpreted the stories about the marvelous births by the
concubines of Emperor Ku 帝嚳.
Emperor Ku is surpassed in fame by several of his sons, such as the model ruler Yao 堯 and
the model minister of agriculture Hou Ji 后稷 (the "Prince Millet"). They were conceived in
some marvelous ways, by seeing a red dragon, eating the egg of a swallow or stepping in the
footprints of a giant. These stories have been the object of a wide variety of interpretations in
Chinese historical texts, each representing a different historical genre. This presentation
shows how the Chinese hermeneutic strategies shaped the diversity of interpretations given to
these stories by Europeans.
Nicolas Standaert is Professor of Sinology at the University of Leuven (Belgium). He
specializes in the cultural contacts between China and Europe in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. His recent publications include An Illustrated Life of Christ Presented to
the Chinese Emperor: The History of Jincheng shuxiang (1640), (Monumenta Serica
Monograph Series LIX) Sankt Augustin Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2007; The Interweaving of
Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe, Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2008; Chinese Voices in the Rites Controversy: Travelling Books,
Community Networks, Intercultural Arguments, (Bibliotheca Instituti Historici S.I. 75), Rome:
Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2012. His new book entitled The Intercultural Weaving
of Historical Texts: Chinese and European Stories about Emperor Ku and his Concubines
will be published by E.J. Brill (Leiden) in 2016.