East-West Symbioses

Book excerpt: This book explores the encounters between “East” and “West”, studying how “they get along”. These exchanges involve deliberate exoticizations and incommensurabilities, as well as creative fusions, such as Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit monk in the late 16th-early 17th centuries who learned Chinese in Beijing well enough to compose works in Chinese, and Octavio Paz, the Mexican Nobel Laureate, who admired Chinese civilization. The book also considers the effect of the West on Asian countries, the cases of Japan and Turkey, who tried to “modernize” by becoming more “Western”, and the examples of China and Korea, who adopted Western forms of theatre to advance a distinctly Asian aesthetic. It will appeal to anyone seeking more than a superficial understanding of the encounters between “East” and “West”.