His Notitia linguae sinicae, written in 1736 and first published in 1831,[1] was the first important Chinese language grammar in a European language. His letters can be found in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine series.[2]
Father de Prémare is among the missionaries who furnished Jean-Baptiste Du Halde with the material for his "Description de la Chine" (Paris, 1735). Among his contributions were translations from the Book of Documents (Du Halde, II, 298); eight odes of the Classic of Poetry (II, 308); and the first translation into a European language of a Chinese drama, "The Orphan of Zhao" (III, 341), titled L'Orphelin de la Maison de Tchao.[3] Premaré sent the translation to Étienne Fourmont, a member of the Académie française.[4][5] However, the play came into the possession of Father Du Halde instead, who published it in his Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique et Physique de l'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinois in 1735, although he had no permission from Prémare or Fourmont to do so.[4] Prémare's translation inspired Voltaire's 1753 tragedy L'Orphelin de la Chine.[6]
Joseph Henri Prémare (translated byJ. G. Bridgman) (1847). The Notitia linguae sinicae of Premare. Printed at the office of Chinese repository. p. 303. Retrieved 2011-05-15.
^Brucker, Joseph. "Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 8 Jun. 2013 Online version.
^West, Stephen H.; Idema, Wilt L. (2015). The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known Versions. New York City: Columbia University Press. pp. 55–56. ISBN978-0-231-53810-7.
Knud Lundbæk. Joseph De Prémare, 1666-1736, S.J. : Chinese Philology and Figurism. (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, Acta Jutlandica, 1991). ISBN8772883448.
Hawkes, David (1985). Classical, Modern and Humane: Essays in Chinese Literature. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. ISBN9789622013544.
Liu, Wu-Chi (1953). "The Original Orphan of China". Comparative Literature. 5 (3): 193–212. doi:10.2307/1768912. JSTOR1768912.
D. E. Mungello. Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa, 1985). Reprinted: Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1989 ISBN0824812190. [1]