The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & The Rise of Chinaphobia: Dr Fu Manchu and The Rise of Chinaphobia - Rilegato

Frayling, Christopher

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0500252076 ISBN 13: 9780500252079

Casa editrice: Thames & Hudson, 2014

Riassunto

A hundred years ago, a character who was to enter the bloodstream of 20th-century popular culture made his first appearance in the world of literature. In his day he became as well known as Count Dracula or Sherlock Holmes: he was the evil genius called Dr. Fu Manchu, described at the beginning of the first story in which he appeared as “the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”Why did the idea that the Chinese were a threat to Western civilization develop at precisely the time when China was in chaos, divided against itself, the victim of successive famines and utterly incapable of being a “peril” to anyone even if it had wanted to be? Even the author of the Dr. Fu Manchu novels, Sax Rohmer, acknowledged that China, “as a nation possess that elusive thing, poise.”And what do the Chinese themselves make of all this? Is it any wonder that they remember what we have carelessly forgotten–the opium wars; the “unfair treaties” that ceded Hong Kong and the New Territories; and the stereotyping of Chinese people in allegedly factual studies?Here cultural historian Christopher Frayling takes us to the heart of popular culture in the music hall, pulp literature, and the mass-market press, and shows how film amplifies our assumptions.

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Recensione:

There can be no doubt that the concept of Orientalism throws a good deal of light on key elements of the Fu Manchu formula. --London Review of Books

... exhaustive and fascinating ... thorough and fluently written. --Frances Wood, Times Literary Supplement

A passionately argued extended essay criticising the west's protean paranoia of China. --Financial Times Weekend

... engrossing, wide-ranging study of the deeply prejudicial mythology surrounding matters Chinese. --Philip French, The Observer

Frayling's wise, intellectually curious study of the west's anxieties about the 'yellow peril' is a testament to the author's cunning in selecting such an unexpectedly fertile subject. --New Statesman

Frayling's deep knowledge of Edwardian sinophobia and its cultural manifestations is fascinating; his cultural history is both beautifully constructed and richly illustrated with vintage postcards, reproductions of book covers and posters, movie stills and cartoons ... Christopher Frayling brilliantly chronicles a shameful history of racism, and warns against the assumption that it no longer exists. --Guardian

Covers an impressively broad terrain ... lavishly illustrated ... Frayling's tale is a fascinating one. --The Financial Times

A fascinating exploration of a surprisingly long-lived phenomenon combining a wealth of arresting detail with a big theme that has relevance today. --Jonathan Fenby

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Thames & Hudson
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0500252076
• ISBN 13: 9780500252079
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 360