Preface

Hi all. This is Chao's English blog about his year in Oxford. I hope to report my life here to my English-speaking friends, especially the students and faculty back at Illinois Wesleyan University. This is my first English blog, and I will try my best to write as frequently as I can (in my second language), although obviously the essay assignments are pretty overwhelming here.

The name of the blog, Lettres anglaises, comes from the title of one of Voltaire's works, The Philosophical Letters, which was originally published under the title The English Letters. Voltaire went into exile in England in the 1720s, and became the most famous Anglophile--lover of anything English. He witnessed the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727, and the great respect that Newton received from the general public really shocked him. Voltaire reported that Newton was buried like a king, and nowhere else other than England could you find such great respect for knowledge and wisdom. (Although, obviously, Voltaire himself was buried like a king with great respect by his fellow Frenchmen in the last decades of the century.) Voltaire thought that England embodied most of the Enlightenment ideals better than anywhere else--civil liberty, constitutional monarchy, rationalization of institutions, laissez-faire, and religious toleration. Also England had their great culture ever since the Renaissance: More, Shakespeare, Marlow, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Defoe, Swift, Newton, Hooke, Gibbon, and Scotsmen such as David Hume and Adam Smith. England was considered to be the first modern state, from which the whole concept of "modernity" was born. Voltaire admired this great nation, and I do too.

Although I have been in England ever since 4th October, I never had a chance to sit down and start writing. Today is the matriculation day of all Oxford freshers, so I figured it is a nice day to commence a new blog, probably.

Please feel free to make comments on anything, good or bad, yes or no. Please also leave your name with your comment so that I will know who you are. Thank you very much.