Time Rhetoric and Asia Writing: The Political Cosmology in <i>The Suma Oriental</i> of Tom&#233; Pires</i>

ZHOU Yun-long

doi:10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214205

Volume 4 Issue 2

Jul. 2021

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ZHOU Yun-long. Time Rhetoric and Asia Writing: The Political Cosmology in The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2021, 4(2): 315-326. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214205

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ZHOU Yun-long. Time Rhetoric and Asia Writing: The Political Cosmology in The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2021, 4(2): 315-326. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214205

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Time Rhetoric and Asia Writing: The Political Cosmology in The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires

doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20214205

ZHOU Yun-long^,

Fujian Normal University

Received Date: 2020-11-09
Rev Recd Date: 2021-01-04

Abstract

Abstract

The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East,from the Red Sea to Japan,Written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515 is an official report by ToméPires who was sent as an ambassador to Asia in the early sixteenth century.This report partly represents the knowledge of Asia before Europe entered the Indian Ocean international trade system.There are two series of time:universal time shared between the narrator and Manuel I and the Asia-Indian Ocean time sealed by the former.The Suma Oriental records the conversation of a Christian reporting his traveling in Asia and providing secular knowledge about many different areas to Manuel I.This scene secularizes the sacred time as "universalizing time." The narrator in The Suma Oriental seems to travel not only in spaces,but also in time and ideas.With the narrator's traveling,the secular knowledge of Asia is accumulated and Europe is gradually modernized.The exotic traveling becomes a secular pilgrimage.In fact,the present tense that is used to represent Asia has never shared the same significance with the "universalizing time" which is owned by the narrator and the Manuel I,but imprisons Asia by the time preservative.In other words,Asia represented in The Suma Oriental relies on the spatialized-time rhetoric.This time rhetoric separates the narrator from Asian spectacle and distributes and resettles the exotic knowledge in a Foucauldian tableau.Then,the cultural distance and ranks between Europe and Asia are produced,and the spatialized-time significance is foregrounded.This time rhetoric sets a non-synchronicity relation between Asia and Europe and freezes Asia in the narrating as the reference of European time and space.The political cosmology in The Suma Oriental is a metaphor of the producing mechanism of exotic knowledge and world awareness in early modern Europe.
- Tomé,
- Pires,
- spatialized time,
- Asia writing,
- Indian Ocean

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References(21)

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