Abstract: Little scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between the East India Company and the Chinese-writing of Romantic literature. Indeed, the Company's trading and diplomatic activities in China had multiple effects on English Romantic writers. On the one hand, the Company's travel notes, which included exploration, trade, and knowledge acquisition, and the various goods imported into Britain promoted the intercommunication and fusion of Eastern and Western cultures, and provided writers with rich and diversified materials and strange imaginations for their creations, and even the opium that the Company dumped in China in order to eliminate the dilemma of trade entry into the country became the hallucinogenic drug that inspired Coleridge, De Quincey, and others to inspire their poetic nature. On the other hand, the Company's diplomatic activities for its own interests, Sinological studies and literary translations, opened a window for Wordsworth and others to observe Chinese culture in many dimensions. However, Romantic writers often used China as a fantastical backdrop for their literary and emotional experiences, or the Far Eastern foil as an antipode to Superior Britishness, and from Charles Lamb to De Quincey, the fear and hatred of China increased rapidly. The complex and insidious relationship between the East India Company and Romantic literature demonstrates the complicity of commerce and literature in the alienation, mystification and even absurdification of the image of China, as well as the tension between East-West dichotomies and visions of cosmopolitanism in the confluence of commodities, literature and ideas.

Key words: East India Company, Romantic literature, imagination of China, antipode

摘要： 一直以来,学界鲜有人关注东印度公司与浪漫主义文学中国书写间的关系。事实上,该公司在华的贸易和外交活动对英国浪漫主义作家产生了多重影响。一方面,公司包括探险、贸易和知识习得的旅行笔记及进口至英国的各类物品促进了东西方文化的互通和融合,为作家的创作提供了丰富多元的素材和光怪陆离的想象,甚至公司为消除贸易入超困境在华倾销的鸦片也成为柯勒律治、德·昆西等人激发灵感和诗性的致幻剂;另一方面,公司为自身利益所展开的外交活动、汉学研究及文学译介给华兹华斯等人打开了多层面观察中国文化的窗口。然而,浪漫主义作家通常将中国用作点缀他们文学书写及情感体验的奇幻背景,或者反衬优越“英国性”的远东对蹠地,从查尔斯·兰姆到德·昆西,恐华仇华心态呈迅速增强之势。东印度公司与浪漫主义文学两者间复杂而隐秘的关系既展现了商业与文学在奇异化、神秘化甚至荒诞化中国形象方面的合谋,又彰显了商品、文学和思想汇流中东西方二元论与世界大同愿景间的张力。

关键词: 东印度公司, 浪漫主义文学, 中国想象, 对蹠地