Journal |
Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
Journal issue | 61 | 2025 | Supplemento
Research Article | Perny’s Imprint: Knowledge of China and Printing Chinese, Between Guizhou (1861) and Paris (1869-1872)
Perny’s Imprint: Knowledge of China and Printing Chinese, Between Guizhou (1861) and Paris (1869-1872)
Abstract
Paul Perny, a missionary in China and an antagonist of the Parisian academic sinologists, was also a botanist and author of linguistic works, which he often edited himself. Archives illustrate how he constructed his knowledge of China and how his specific skills operated in circuits of different scales, sometimes overlapping and permeable, sometimes instead mutually impermeable. His printing activities demonstrate that the dissemination of knowledge (in this case of the Chinese language) required technical and material support, which were all circulating on a global scale at that time. This paper therefore portrays printing presses as ‘spaces of circulation’, where information and materials converge, and people of different statuses interact.
Submitted: July 1, 2024 | Accepted: Dec. 9, 2024 | Published May 30, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords China • Paul Perny • Guizhou • Sinology • Paris • Printing • MEP
Copyright © 2025 Michela Bussotti. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2025/02/007
