Lin His chiang

Abstract

After the issue of the prohibition decree in the first year of Yongzheng reign, European Jesuits in China was deported to and detained in Guangzhou through the proscription (1724–1732). During his confinement, French Jesuit Joseph de Prémare (1666–1736) accomplished the compilation of the Notitia linguæ Sinicæ (1728) in Latin. It is the first Chines-learning treatise that divides Chinese into two categories: “lingua vulgari et familiari stylo/spoken language and familiar style” and “sinica oration in nobiliori librorum stylo/the language of books.” According to Prémare’s Introductory Note to the First Part of the Notitia linguæ Sinicæ, the two parts of this work is designed to afford assistance to Jesuits to “acquire a full knowledge of the Chinese.” The Notitia linguæ Sinicæ, however, is definitely not just a treatise concerning language-learning or Chinese rhetoric, it is, in the words of Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832), “un traité de littérature presque complet.”

Former research on the Notitia linguæ Sinicæ, though plenteous, concentrated principally on the copies and editions, on the materials of Prémare’s exemplifications, on language-learning, and on the status of Notitia linguæ Sinicæ in the history of missionary Chinese grammar treatises. But if we scrutinize Chapter Four of Part Second, Notitia linguæ Sinicæ is also a book suggests the concepts of Western rhetoric. Besides the Renaissance rhetorical studies on the figure of speech, the exemplification of Notitia linguæ Sinicæ also implies Greek rhetorical notion, especially the psychagogy within Plato’s Phaedrus. Through his exemplification, Prémare employs the concept of philosophical rhetoric to further the purpose of religious persuasion.

Taking a “metaphor of space” as the junction, this study aims at connecting Plato’s Phaedrus with Prémare’s former work “Meng Meitu Ji” (1709), which he took as an example in the Notitia linguæ Sinicæ. By an analyzation beyond the figures of speech, we will penetrate the subtle concept of Western rhetoric implied within.

Keywords: Joseph de Prémare, SJ (1666–1736), Notitia linguæ Sinicæ [Knowledge about the Chinese Language] (1728), “Meng Meitu Ji” [“Dreaming about the Paradise”] (1709), Phaedrus, Psychagogy