Cette recherche a pour objet l’étude de la question de la rencontre dans l’œuvre italienne de Matteo Ricci, à partir d’une lecture biographique des Lettere et du Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina. Le propos entend ajouter à la figure de l’écrivain sino-chrétien, celle d’un Matteo Ricci auteur d’une œuvre italienne digne intérêt, tant d’un point de vue civilisationnel que littéraire. Notre démarche s’appuie sur une lecture de ses écrits comme anatomie de sa rencontre avec le Céleste Empire et comme biographie d’un voyage littéraire, ce corpus étant appréhendé comme phénoménologie littéraire de la rencontre. Une réflexion autour du concept d’altérité permet d’analyser les textes ricciens en tant que biographie d’un regard particulier sur la Chine et les Chinois, une vision qui promeut, à partir d’une interprétation humaniste et chrétienne, la rencontre sensible avec l’Autre lointain, portée par le désir. Nous avons voulu mettre en évidence la façon dont Matteo Ricci, au fil de son œuvre missionnaire et littéraire, élabore une nouvelle herméneutique du monde chinois, en rupture avec l’imagologie issue de l’Europe médiévale. Le dernier volet de notre analyse entend l’écriture de Ricci comme la biographie d’une parole et comme la proposition d’une mystique et d’une esthétique de la rencontre. Fidèle à la tradition chrétienne, il redéfinit néanmoins les rapports entre l’Occident et l’altérité païenne par la promotion d’un nouveau langage : l’inculturation. D’un point de vue littéraire, son écriture propose une démarche stylistique singulière qui mêle esthétique du divers, historiographie en tension vers l’épique et apologétique chrétienne. / This thesis aims at studying the question of the encounter in Matteo Ricci’s Italian work, starting from a biographical reading of Lettere and of Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina.This study supplements the figure of the Sino-Christian writer with that of Matteo Ricci as the author of an Italian work that is worthy of interest both from the point of view of civilisation and of literature. My approach relies on a reading of his writings as an anatomy of his encounter with the Celestial Empire and as a biography of a literary travel, the set of texts being apprehended as a literary phenomenology of the encounter.Reflecting on the concept of alterity allows one to analyse Ricci’s texts as the biography of a particular look on China and Chinese people — a vision which, from a Humanist and Christian interpretation, promotes the tangible encounter with a distant Other, born by desire. Throughout his missionary and literary work, Matteo Ricci constructs a new hermeneutics of the Chinese world that breaks away from the imagology produced by medieval Europe.The final section of the analysis envisages Ricci’s writing as the biography of a discourse, as putting forward a religious interpretation and an aesthetics of the encounter. Being faithful to the Christian tradition, he however redefines the relationships between the Western world and pagan otherness by promoting a new language — inculturation. From a literary point of view, his writing proposes a singular stylistic approach, one that mingles aesthetic diversity and historiography which gestures towards the epic and Christian apologetics.

Matteo Ricci's True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (1603) has been studied extensively by scholars of the Jesuit China Mission, especially in terms of accommodation through means of Scholastic and Humanist arguments and translation choices. Few of these studies, however, discuss the genre of this work (disputation), nor consider this genre in relation to Renaissance rhetorical teachings and how this relationship informs Ricci's accommodative strategies. The purpose of this paper is to remedy this gap in early modern Jesuit scholarship. Through a review of the history of accommodations in disputations in the Aristotelian-Scholastic and Ciceronian-Humanist traditions, this paper claims that True Meaning is a Humanist disputation, not only because Ricci translated Christian terms into Chinese and draws references from classical sources, but also because this text follows strategies taught in the Humanist, but not the Scholastic curriculum. If True Meaning is a Humanist disputation, then Ricci's teachings should be reconsidered from the perspective of Renaissance rhetoric, which sheds further light on how Ricci's work fits into Renaissance culture and the transformation of the early modern disputation genre, as well as provides further explanation of the Western accommodation paradigm Ricci brought to China, which is prior to understanding how Ricci was transformed by China.

This work explores the relationship between time, temporality, and power by utilizing interactions between Jesuit missionaries and the Ming and Qing governments of late imperial China as a case study. It outlines the complex relationship between knowledge of celestial mechanics, methods of measuring the passage of time, and the tightly controlled circumstances in which that knowledge was allowed to operate. Just as the Chinese courts exercised authority over time and the heavens, so too had the Catholic Church in Europe. So as messengers of God’s authority, the Jesuits identified the importance of astronomical and temporal authority in Chinese culture and sought to convey the supremacy of Christianity through their mastery of the stars and negotiate positions of power within both imperial governments.

This work explores the relationship between time, temporality, and power by utilizing interactions between Jesuit missionaries and the Ming and Qing governments of late imperial China as a case study. It outlines the complex relationship between knowledge of celestial mechanics, methods of measuring the passage of time, and the tightly controlled circumstances in which that knowledge was allowed to operate. Just as the Chinese courts exercised authority over time and the heavens, so too had the Catholic Church in Europe. So as messengers of God’s authority, the Jesuits identified the importance of astronomical and temporal authority in Chinese culture and sought to convey the supremacy of Christianity through their mastery of the stars and negotiate positions of power within both imperial governments.

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La ricerca ha come oggetto l'analisi e la traduzione in italiano del Trattato Xiguo jifa (la Mnemotecnica occidentale) di Matteo Ricci S.J.. Prendiamo le mosse da una verifica del ruolo svolto dalla mnemotecnica nel sistema educativo gesuitico per passare all'esame della ricca attività di Matteo Ricci nel campo della terminologia, in particolare per quanto riguarda le creazioni neologiche volte a trasmettere conoscenze occidentali in lingua cinese. La verifica del processo di memorizzazione così come viene spiegato nel trattato permette di identificare una serie di termini chiave afferenti all'ambito della mnemotecnica o a quello strettamente legato della filosofia e della religione per arrivare a determinare le modalità con cui il missionario rende, nel trattato, i termini occidentali. / The research concentrates on the analysis and translation in Italian language of the Treatise on the techniques of memorization. The Treatise was written in Chinese language by Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary at the end of the sixteenth century. At first we take into account the role of mnemonics in the Jesuit educational system; we than take into consideration the important terminological activity carried out by Ricci during his life in China. We observe the main contributes of Ricci to the invention of neologisms in Chinese language, in order to transmit Western knowledge to Chinese literati. We then analyse the Treatise on the basis of other linguists' previous studies and we identify key concepts to be analysed in order to describe the main terminological activity used in the Treatise.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem westlichen Verständnis von chinesischer Schrift. Im westlichen Diskurs herrscht eine Auffassung vor, der zufolge die chinesischen Schriftzeichen eine „fast naturalistische Darstellung“ von Dingen seien, die unabhängig von der gesprochenen Sprache im Sinne „eines visuellen Objekts“ funktionieren soll. Dabei wird die Tatsache, dass auch sie wie alle anderen Schriftsysteme zur Wiedergabe der gesprochenen Wörter verwendet werden und dadurch funktionieren, ausgeblendet. Die Vorstellung der sprachunabhängigen chinesischen Schrift wirkt darüber hinaus auch auf die Kulturtheorien ein, die auf der Schrift basierend die chinesische bzw. asiatische Kultur zu charakterisieren und sie mit der europäischen zu vergleichen versuchen. Dabei ist zu beobachten, dass die angenommene sprachunabhängige Bildhaftigkeit oder Konkretheit der chinesischen Schrift zwar einerseits Grund für eine Aufwertung ist, wobei das aus ihr resultierende Denkmodell als ein alternatives des westlichen Denkens aufgefasst wird, dass aber letztendlich aus derselben Auffassung auch das negative Urteil entspringt, mit jener visuellen Konkretheit gehe ein ‚geringer Abstand zu den Gegenständen‘ einher und daraus folge eine Unfähigkeit zum abstrakten Denken bei dem, der sich dieser Schrift bediene. Die Frage, die vorliegende Arbeit durchzieht, lautet daher: Woher stammt dieser ‚Mythos‘ der chinesischen Schrift, der wiederum zurückwirkt auf das westliche Ostasienbild? Und warum bewahrt er sich so hartnäckig im westlichen Denken, dass seine Nachwirkung bis in aktuelle Theorien zu beobachten ist? Wie ist die ambivalente Einschätzung chinesischer bzw. ostasiatischer Kultur in ihnen zu verstehen, die aus derselben ideographischen Auffassung chinesischer Schrift stammt? Durch eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte der chinesischen Schrift unter Berücksichtigung des abendländischen China-, bzw. Ostasienbilds wird versucht, darauf zu antworten. / This dissertation deals with the Western views of Chinese characters. In Western discourses the Chinese written language has generally been viewed as a naturalistic representation of things, close to visual images (pictographs) or as a means of conveying ideas (ideographs), unrelated to spoken language. The fact that they reproduce spoken language like all other writing systems has been underexplored. Under this assumption, cultural theories have defined Chinese or Asian cultures as essentially distinct from European cultures. However, the language-independency and concreteness of Chinese script provides reason for revaluation of those views that consider the Chinese (or Asian) ways of thinking as an alternative to Western thought: that which ultimately arises from the negative judgments that those with visual concreteness are farther detached from objects, and are, therefore, unable to exercise abstract thinking. Through a critical analysis of the history of discourses of Chinese writings, this work address the following questions: Whence comes the ‘myth ''of the Chinese character, which, in turn, reinforces the Western views of Asia: why it remains so persistent in Western views as observed in contemporary cultural theories; how the ambivalent appreciation of Chinese or East Asian-culture resulted from the same ideographic view of the Chinese written language.