Failures East and West: Cultural Encounters Between East Asia and Europe

Often, the story of encounters between Asia and the West has been told as one of success, of cross-fertilization, reciprocal stimulation and an exchange of commodities and knowledge. Yet, the history of East-West encounters is riddled with prominent examples of misunderstandings, ignorance, unrealistic expectations or unbridgeable cultural differences. Bringing together scholars working across Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, English Studies and French Studies, this book presents new perspectives on such instances by theorizing epistemologies of failure. Providing examples from different periods and disciplines, it reveals how culturally informed expectations and biases, performative and linguistic practices and imaginative horizons specific to the cultures involved shape notions of failure and success. Case studies range from first encounters in the early modern period to contemporary novels and focus on actual or imaginary encounters between East Asia and Western European cultures.

University of Trier, Germany

Ralf Hertel is Professor of English Literature at the University of Trier, Germany. He has published in the field of Anglo-Asian literary encounters, early modern studies as well as contemporary literature. Among his most recent book publications are English Poetry in Context: From the 16th to the 21st Century (with Peter Hühn; 2021), Empowering Contemporary Fiction in English: The Impact of Empowerment in Literary Studies (ed. with Eva-Maria Windberger; 2021), Early Encounters between East Asia and Europe: Telling Failures (ed. with Michael Keevak; 2017) and Staging England in the Elizabethan History Play: Performing National Identity (2014). He was a guest professor at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2015.

Kirsten Sandrock teaches at the department of British Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Goettingen. She is currently guest professor of English Literature at Tuebingen University and previously taught at the Universities of Leipzig, Vienna, and Wuppertal. Her research ranges from the early modern literature and culture to contemporary Anglophone studies, and she has published widely on intercultural encounters, colonial and postcolonial studies, Shakespeare, travel writing, gender, and genre studies. She is the author of Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603-1707 (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), co-editor of Locating Italy: East and West in British-Italian Transactions (2013) and of the Shakespeare Seminar Online.