![]() ![]() ![]() On every side, Goldsmith's descriptions are sarcastic and ironic. ![]() He does the latter by way of the story of Choang and Hansi, two Korean lovers renowned for the intensity of their romance. In letter 18, “The Story of a Chinese Matron,” Lien Chi, writing to his friend back in China, recounts his experience of the courtship and marriage habits of the British and Dutch, comparing them first against one another, and then against South Eastern Asian habits. Because Goldsmith's work is so capacious, this review will take one letter, letter 18, as exemplary of Goldsmith's general approach throughout the series. In the process, he incidentally also reveals a lot about contemporary British conceptions of Chinese culture and the state of British trade relations with China. There are 119 letters, some 700 pages, in all in them, Goldsmith uses his fictitious author to deliver witty and frequently damning criticism of contemporary British culture. A collection of letters written by Lien Chi Altangi, a fictional Chinese visitor to London, the letters were originally published individually in the daily journal The Public Ledger as a series than ran between January 1760 and August 1761. Although sometimes described as a novel, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1760) is united by a very slight plot. ![]()
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