The Bookwheel: A Cross-Cultural Story

Held via Zoom – registration required: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArfu6srjsiHNd7DNoaO1n9_mhe0JRSpm4u

In Yuanxi Qiqi Tushuo Luzui (The Illustrated Most Exotic Instruments from the Far West), published in China in 1628, there was an illustration of a big wheel, in front of which a literatus was seated in a chair, reads the books placed on the tilted shelves fixed in the wheel. It was a scene never seen before in the history of China. The instrument called bookwheel (book wheel, reading wheel), originated in Europe. In this talk I will try to trace the history of the reception of the bookwheel in early modern China, analyze the interpretations of its alleged Chinese counterparts by both early modern and modern scholars, and discuss the differences between the book cultures that set the stage for the understandings and misunderstandings of the nature and the operation of the bookwheel.

Co-sponsored with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies