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This thesis explores how the experience of reclusion in free landscapes and private gardens of Confucian China and Enlightenment Europe contributed to people’s moral improvement by cultivating good passions such as temperance, encouraging introspection, increasing the sense of responsibility towards society and rendering erudite individuals prompt to perform their public duty as politicians and civil servants. The thesis is based on the comparative analysis of philosophical concepts, works of art, poems and cultural practices in order to highlight the similarities and divergences between Chinese and European – particularly British and French - eremitic landscape dwelling. Taking into account the historical context in which two important systems of thought were developed in different geographic regions, the research brings together the state-sanctioned Confucian ethics with Enlightenment Deism which, inspired by Roman Stoics, played a pivotal role in the promulgation of reclusive landscape culture and the creation of non-geometrical gardens used as retreats in the eighteenth-century Europe. Investigating human relationships with the natural environment and organized society, as well as views on interpersonal relationships, established religion and matters of cultural heritage, the thesis shows that gardens where Confucian literati and socially privileged Europeans, who had espoused Enlightenment ideals, liked to retire comprised mediating spaces between the private realm and the public sphere, solitude and public action. Eremitic landscape dwelling did not derive from a sentiment of contempt for the world or from a selfish desire to avoid hardships. Rather, this noble form of reclusion whose purpose was the cultivation of virtue and humaneness revolved around the greatest interest of individuals and the welfare of society.

This thesis explores images of masculinity in Chinese visual art in the early twentieth century paintings of Xu Beihong. In particular, I focus on Xu’s introduction of Western idealism into Chinese figurative painting and his effort to transform China’s “face.” When Xu Beihong returned to China in 1927 after studying Western art in Paris and other cultural centers for eight years, he brought with him a new vision of ideal masculinity, one which would not only embody national spirituality, but also bring back China’s “face” after a series of national defeats and perceived humiliations. Inspired by idealistic Western art, Xu replaced conventional depictions of Chinese men (which were typically rather androgynous, gentle, stiff, stylized, and clothed) with more heroic, muscular, graceful, idealized and naked images that could combat the visual image of Chinese men as the ‘sick men of East Asia.’ Unfortunately, this aspect of his work has been either ignored by Chinese scholars or has opened him up to attack in Chinese art circles and in Western criticism. The dissertation proposes that the time is ripe for a new appreciation of this aspect of his work. I further argue that a specific focus on Xu’s representation of masculinity enables us to place him in proper historical context. I use the concept of Chinese face as a lens through which to gain insight into the trajectory of Xu Beihong’s creative life as an impoverished and provincial traditional painter, as a practitioner of Western idealism, and as a pioneer and educator who ventured to reimagine Chinese men. This dissertation intends to clarify that face was among Xu’s primary reasons for adherence to idealism and that restoring face was one of his ultimate goals.

In this paper, I discuss the interrelation between scientism and imperialism, as it plays out in three milestone travelogues written on China in the 17th and 18th centuries; namely, the travelogues of Johan Nieuhof (1669), Lord George Macartney (1797), and Andreas Everard van braam Houckgeest (1798). Understanding the lasting significance of these texts, I argue, requires placing them - and by extension the embassies which originated them - in context of the burgeoning scientific ideology of their era. To do this, I will first introduce my key texts, and argue for why I believe they can be considered sites of inquiry into the impact of scientific ideology upon Western European conceptions of China. Then I will discuss in more detail my theoretical framework, its derivation, my exegetical methodology, and my justifications for making such an analysis of Nieuhof, Macartney, and Houckgeest. Then, to set the stage for the close readings to come, I will consider the comparative levels of scientific and technological sophistication in Western Europe and China during the long 18th century, as well as the current state of this academic discourse itself, by reviewing various essential works on the subject. In my second chapter, I will perform my analysis of Nieuhof's travelogue. In my third, I will overview a selection of texts by Sir William Temple, who will be considered as an ideological foil to Nieuhof. In chapters four and five, I will analyse the travelogues of Lord George Macartney and A.E. van Braam Houckgeest respectively, extending to them the methodology already applied to Nieuhof. Then in chapter six, I will briefly set aside my diplomats to address historian of the book Benjamin Schmidt's critique of author-focused exegeses of premodern Dutch travel literature - a critique which, in calling into question the legitimacy of analyses like my own, demands address. I will overview my exegeses and suggest avenues for future research in chapter seven. And finally, in my epilogue, I will conclude my thesis by briefly sketching an example of how the relationship between early modern scientism and imperialism continued to develop into the 19th century.