<!doctype html public «-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en»> http-equiv=content-type> This book examines the epistemological assumptions about language and writing that were persistent throughout the course of imperial Chinese history (with an emphasis on the Han dynasty, when the core theories were established) and critically compares them to the history of European discourse on the abstract notion of ideography (from Plato to Champollion).