Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives

Rating:
Summary: Lao's review
Review: As with the previous reviewer, this was also one of the first in my collection. An excellent dictionary-style reference work which examines the historical, legendary and every day significance of about two hundred objects and concepts which play key roles in Chinese culture. Footnoted with sources, it is an excellent spring board and encourages the reader to do more in depth study on the wide variety of topics touched on in this volume.

Rating:
Summary: Lao's review
Review: As with the previous reviewer, this was also one of the first in my collection. An excellent dictionary-style reference work which examines the historical, legendary and every day significance of about two hundred objects and concepts which play key roles in Chinese culture. Footnoted with sources, it is an excellent spring board and encourages the reader to do more in depth study on the wide variety of topics touched on in this volume.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic work - if you ask me, a total beginner
Review: This is the first book specifically focused on Oriental culture and symbolism that I have picked up in my entire life (for me, an aspiring writer, not to know something so enticing? - preposterous!). Quite instantly presented me with an insatiable interest of the subject. Precise, academical, and completely accessible for literally anyone (it was accessible for me!), Outlines is the perfect reference work for an aspiring beginner. It is illustrated in black-and-white where illustrations might be expected, all specific terms are followed by the Chinese hieroglyphs, and, overall, this seems to be a very solid and well-written work. The only reason I am giving this book a mere four stars is that of caution: how can I, a total beginner, know if this book isn't lying?

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: A Beautiful Antique
Review: This volume is listed as a "third edition" and dated 1976, which suggests it is fairly recent. In fact, except for correction of "obvious printing errors," it reproduces the 1941 Shanghai edition of a book published in Peking (Beijing) in 1931 as "Outlines of Chinese Symbolism," and previously revised in 1932. The full title of Williams' final version is "Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives: an alphabetical compendium of antique legends and beliefs, as reflected in the manners and customs of the Chinese." As reproduced by Dover Publications in 1976, with 401 illustrations (including color plates on the inside covers), it is an extremely attractive volume, packed with information, and reasonably well arranged. It looks like everything an ordinary curious reader could want; and I have found nothing quite comparable to it, at least in English, although there are now excellent studies of particular symbols and concepts. (Eberhard's "Dictionary of Chinese Symbols" has a different focus.) It is still cited in reputable works by professional Sinologists, along with Williams' "Manual of Chinese Metaphor" (1920).

It should, however, be used with caution; a useful resource to someone with the necessary background can be a snare for the rest of us. Described by Dover as the "work of a scholarly English resident of China," it does not seem to reflect professional skills as a Sinologist, and frequently reports information at second or third hand, some of it already antiquated in 1921. Williams' own observations are interesting, but largely restricted to North China, mainly Peking and its vicinity (to Williams, very properly for the time, Peiping), and various Western enclaves on the coast. It is to Williams' credit, however, that he at least tries to include some Chinese popular culture, rather than just the idealized official versions. It is a reflection of the time that he actually rather apologizes for including Buddhist (therefore "foreign") and Taoist (to the elite as well as the missionaries, "superstitious") as well as Confucian symbols and concepts.

Those who have read much about China will soon notice that the transliterations are inconsistent, and sometimes very odd, at times corresponding to no system that is readily apparent. This is particularly common in Williams' quotations from his sources. I suspect that a mixture of the use of spoken vernaculars and "classical" pronunciation in those sources, alongside differing transliteration systems themselves, is responsible; Williams doesn't seem to have made a clear statement of his approach to this problem (or I missed it). Apparently he used the Wade-Giles himself, but didn't try to impose it on quotations. In a world of books then already littered with German, French, Dutch, English, and other systems for alphabetical renderings of Chinese, and now with the continuing use of the old Wade-Giles system alongside the "official" Pinyin, both with variants, this is a real nuisance, although usually not more than that. (It would be nice if, in some future edition, a qualified person supplied current Romanized renderings for the Chinese characters; and possibly the modern, simplified form; but it doesn't seem likely.)

More serious is Williams' sometimes free-and-easy use of materials without, apparently, checking their ultimate origin, so that his impressive citations can't always be taken at face value. (In addition, his references to nineteenth-century academic journals are of little practical help today, although inevitable when the book was first published.) In one extreme case, the result is rather amusing. Williams mentions that the standard version of the "Willow Pattern" design on porcelain was invented in England in the eighteenth century, and copied for the foreign market by Chinese manufacturers. But he then reproduces a long, romantic, story explaining it, without making it quite clear that the story is also a Western concoction, containing only a few Chinese elements, which he does identify. This leaves the impression that it is, at whatever remove, and however freely, translated from a Chinese source. Robert H. van Gulik, diplomat, scholar, and novelist, later incorporated the outlines of the tale into his Judge Dee mystery, "The Willow Pattern," explaining the situation in a Postscript, which cites Williams as a readily available source for the story. The Chinese translation of his novel, he pointed out, would introduce the supposedly Chinese story to the Chinese language....

Wherever there is overlap in coverage, I try to check Williams against Wolfram Eberhard's "A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols," which, among its other merits, often mentions whether a particular concept is common Chinese, regional, local, or associated mainly with minority cultures; an issue often ignored by Williams and his sources, including missionaries and merchants who took the groups they were working with as perfect representatives of Chinese culture. Of course, the same problem was found among serious scholars, who often described everything about the better-educated Chinese they came in contact with as "typical" until told that it wasn't; and tended to regard it at as in any case more genuine than the beliefs of the vast majority of Chinese. Williams' industry was admirable; one wishes the product of it had gone through further revision.