A Dialogized Monologue: A Study of Gu Hongming’s Letters to Richard Wilhelm

Abstract This paper examines the twenty-one letters from a Chinese scholar Gu Hongming to a German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm. It is essential to empower the right of speech on the side of Wilhelm by restoring a dialogic discourse from the epistolary space and revealing the innate nature of polemic in Gu’s internally dialogized publications. Their interconnected cultural and social activities represented in these letters may all be regarded as concrete rejoinders that signify their meanings and are signified by their previous context. The interaction between Gu and Wilhelm has cast a far-reaching impact on their developments in either academic thoughts or cultural identities, so much so that only by perceiving their reciprocally infiltrated ideas and related activities in coexistence are we able to understand their richer and fuller personalities developing along a mutual reference line and in a context of an unfinalized dialogue.