Abel-Rémusat and the Philological Turn in Chinese Character Studies

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_57How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat; Chinese Character Studies; European Sinology; Philology

Abstract

In the 19th century, European Sinology was in a stage of transition from scattered knowledge accumulation to systematic knowledge construction and professional training. In this period, the research of Chinese characters was restricted by missionary practices and vague philosophical speculation, and the scientific research method was urgently needed. In this context, under the guidance of Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat’s research achievements, this study initially tries to discuss the “semantic turn” proposed by Rémusat in the research of Chinese characters in 19th century European Sinology and its effect. Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat was the first person who used the semantic research method, that is, structure research, grammatical rules and textual research to study Chinese characters, and separated the research of Chinese characters from early philosophical speculation or missionary practice, but developed in an orderly and scientific direction. This linguistic transition also reflects the academic spirit of Rémusat’s research, and at the same time, provides research criteria for the research of 19th century European Sinology to become an independent and systematic scientific research, providing the necessary academic positioning and professional level.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yuqi Huang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/15
TI  - Abel-Rémusat and the Philological Turn in Chinese Character Studies
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Mental Growth and Human Resilience (MGHR 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 524
EP  - 535
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_57
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-509-6_57
ID  - Huang2025
ER  -