John Fryer Papers: stato dell'arte e prospettive di ricerca

The John Fryer Papers, housed in Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, are among the most important primary sources for research on John Fryer (Fu Lanya 傅兰雅, 1839-1928). They represent an archive of information on the circumstances of late Qing China, including materials for teaching Chinese, articles, translations, notes, letters and miscellaneous material. The purpose of the article is to present the Fryer Papers, illustrating their contents, pointing out research perspectives and addressing relevant questions. In the first part of the article, the author briefly introduces the story of the Fryer Papers and draws a summary of how they have been used in secondary literature; some of the most important texts which extensively used the Fryer Papers are presented. In the second part, he sketches the contents of each carton, briefly highlighting some research perspectives, with a special focus on missionary linguistics and the history of cultural interactions in the framework of the Xixue Dongjian 西学东渐. In the third and last part, the author points out some questions related to the conservation, cataloguing and more generally, the analysis and value of the Fryer Papers. The article represents a bibliographic introduction to this fundamental but often neglected archival resource. By giving a glance of the contents of the Fryer Papers and highlighting a few of the possible research perspectives, the article represents a research instrument for scholars not only of John Fryer but, even more so, of missionary linguistics and the history of cultural interactions.