A Preliminary Study on Christian Missionary Pamphlets in Trimetrical Chinese: Sophie Martin’s Three-Character Classic for Girls

摘要

One consequence of the Qing Government’s religious policy in the early nineteenth century was the fact that the activities of the early Protestant missionaries were strictly confined to local Chinese communities. Therefore, the printing of religious pamphlets became one of the main tasks after Protestants' arrival on the coast of south China and southeast Asia. Apart from other types of pamphlets, a traditional Chinese trimetrical classic had a significant impact on the missionaries’s production of their own texts. In 1832, Sophia Martin compiled a trimetrical text entitled Xunnv Sanzijing (Three- Character Classic for Girls) for the education of Chinese Christian girls. This seventeenpage pamphlet, however, skillfully employs the strategy of educating girls by referring to traditional Chinese Confucian ethics as well as basic Christian moral pedagogy. After examining the historical background as well as the language and structure of the text, this paper further discusses how Chinese-Christian writings were produced in the early stages of Protestant missionaries' work, and what strategies they used to attract their potential female audience.