Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2014

The Collision between Classical Studies and Oriental Studies: The Modern Imagination of the Orientalizing Revolution of Ancient Greece

(Abstract)

Li Yongbin

The concept of the “orientalizing revolution” in ancient Greece, first put forward by Bergman as early as 1990, gained a wide audience through Burkert’s The Orientalizing Revolution. The proposition of the orientalizing revolution and the expansion of its influence are in fact an extension and expansion of the two topics of “orientalizing” and “the orientalizing epoch.” The orientalizing revolution is not itself a purely historical concept, but blends many elements of imagination. It is in fact the result of an expanded understanding of the orientalizing period in art history and the collision of classical and oriental studies and of classicism and orientalism in the context of modern politics.