Virtue's Vogues: Eastern Authenticity and the Commodification of Chinese-ness on the 18 th -Century Stage

Abstract

Four years after the premiere of Voltaire's L'Orphelin de la Chine in Paris, the English playwright Arthur Murphy adopts it, makes "moral improvements," and claims the superiority of his Chinese "English Orphan" even as he pays due respect to Voltaire's representation of Eastern virtue. 1 Despite their Western conventions and concerns, the two Orphan'sare in fact adaptations of the first Chinese play to be translated into a European language, the Orphan of the House of Chao (Chao-Shih Ku-Erh). A thirteenth-century Yuan Dynasty drama about the Chao family's near-destruction, resistance, and vengeance, it is translated into French by the Jesuit Prémare and first published in 1735 in Du Halde's Description géographique, historique, etc., de l'empire de la Chine; this authoritative ethnography undergoes a craze of rival translations into English in book form and popular magazine installments between 1738-42. 2 Once published in England, a host of theatrical productions follow. Why the interest in this Chinese play? In eighteenth-century Europe, we see a pseudo-philosophical turn to China for moral authority; if the Yuan version is concerned with violence, revenge, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, the Western interpretations embrace the latter two themes and add the Enlightenment virtues of morality and emotionalism to the characterization of China. Authors, translators, and booksellers draw from a common source of Jesuit translations to capitalize on the moral and cultural fund of China's "Eastern virtues"—a sinophilia driven by philosophical idealization of China's good reason, nationalistic and commercial competition, as well as literary controversy over the "authentic" Chinese original.