The Citizen of the World

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Memorial plaque for the author in London's Temple Church with the inscription: Oliver Goldsmith / born Pallas Co. Longford, Ireland 1728 / died London 1774 / poet, novelist, playwright / author of The Deserted Village , The Vicar of Wakefield , She Stoops to Conquer / "... who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn" / Dr. Samuel Johnson
The Club ( Joshua Reynolds )

The Citizen of the World ( World citizen ) or with the full title: The citizen of the world, or letters from a Chinese philosopher residing in London to his friends in the east ( the citizens of the world, or letters of staying in London Chinese philosopher to his friends in the east ) by the Irish writer and doctor Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) is a collection of fictional letters that were initially published in Newbery's Public Ledger 1760–1761 and which appeared in 1762 under the title mentioned. In these 119 letters, Oliver Goldsmith combines a number of his best essays and moral descriptions by means of a framework into a coherent, unified literary work, in which he presents them as letters and diary entries from a Chinese scholar residing in London who during his stay in the city paid close attention and critical wit observes and reconsiders the conditions in England of his time. Goldsmith uses this fictional outsider perspective to ironically and sometimes morally comment on British society and its conventions.

The Chinese philosopher named Lien Chi Altangi from "Honan in China" (Letter 1) is a scholar who learned the English language through his contact with a merchant and other English people in Canton , but their manners and customs are completely alien to him (" entirely a stranger to their manners and customs ").

In Letter 88, for example, the Chinese tells his (also fictional) friend Fum Hoam, the "first president of the ceremonial academy in Beijing, China", of his plans to found an academy to teach English women - their instruction given the many language teachers, Music teachers, hairdressers and educators would be completely in the hands of foreigners - in the art of getting along with husbands ("the art of managing husbands") and keeping their smiles under control ("the art of managing their smiles"). But he did not pursue the plan any further, because marriage is currently so out of fashion that a lady could have any man anyway. Meanwhile, he advises the "fair sex" to get husbands as quickly as possible ("to get husbands as fast as they can").

The work was inspired by the earlier published Persian Letters by Montesquieu . A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking (1757) by Horace Walpole had also appeared shortly before .

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ digitized version
  2. ↑ digitized version

literature

  • The Citizen of the World, The Bee. Everyman's Library No. 902. Published by JM Dent & Sons, London, 1962

German translations :

  • The citizen of the world or letters from a Chinese philosopher in London to a friend in the Orient. Translated by JK Wetzel, Leipzig 1781 (2 volumes) (digitized?)
  • The citizen of the world or letters from a Chinese philosopher in London to his friends in the Far East . Translated from English by Helmut T. Heinrich . With an afterword by Friedemann Berger . Leipzig, Kiepenheuer, 1977

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