Hyperbole in Early Modern Missionary Travel Accounts of China

Abstract

For much of the early modern period, Europeans identified China as a land of opulence and abundance. This image was later dismissed as an unfaithful representation, wilfully created by missionaries who overstated the positive qualities of China, and understated its negative attributes. This chapter explores the beginnings of overstatement and exaggeration in the earliest Iberian missionary accounts of China. As travel publications flooded the sixteenth-century print market, new literary conventions emerged, privileging eyewitness observations over hearsay. Negotiating the porous categories of fact and fiction, missionaries sought to convince audiences of their reliability while creating impressive accounts. This chapter demonstrates that hyperbole, more than mere exaggeration, was creatively and strategically used by the missionaries not to deceive, but to highlight to their audiences the promise and potential of China. By insisting that the reality of China exceeded the limits of the textual medium, the missionaries liberally created an image of an abundant land. As their texts gained popularity and underwent translations, redactions and reprints, the reception and repetitions of these hyperboles could not always be shaped and controlled as the missionaries had intended. The missionaries’ hyperbolic China was further amplified and veered precariously between the boundaries of information and disinformation.