Translingual Practice : Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity--China, 1900-1937 / Lydia H. Liu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Liu, Lydia H., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese literature--20th century.

Chinese literature.

Chinese literature--Foreign influences.

China--Civilization--20th century.

China.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 474 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [1996]

Summary:

Are languages incommensurate? If so, how do people establish and maintain hypothetical equivalences between words and their meanings? What does it mean to translate one culture into the language of another on the basis of commonly conceived equivalences? This study—bridging contemporary theory, Chinese history, comparative literature, and culture studies—analyzes the historical interactions among China, Japan, and the West in terms of "translingual practice." By this term, the author refers to the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arose, circulated, and acquired legitimacy in early modern China as it contacted/collided with European/Japanese languages and literatures. In reexamining the rise of modern Chinese literature in this context, the book asks three central questions: How did "modernity" and "the West" become legitimized in May fourth literary discourse? What happened to native agency in this complex process of legitimation? How did the Chinese national culture imagine and interpret its own moment of unfolding?

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

I 0 Introduction: The Problem of Language in Cross-Cultural Studies

PART 1 Between the Nation and the Individual

2. Translating National Character: Lu Xun and Arthur Smith

3. The Discourse of Individualism

PART II Translingual Modes of Representation

4. Homo Economicus and the Question of Novelistic Realism

5. Narratives of Desire: Negotiating the Real and the Fantastic

6. The Deixis of Writing in the First Person

PART III Nation Building and Culture Building

7. Literary Criticism as a Discourse of Legitimation

8. The Making of the Compendium of Modem Chinese Literature

9. Rethinking Culture and National Essence

Appendixes

A. Neologisms Derived from Missionary-Chinese Texts and Their Routes of Diffusion

B. Sino-Japanese-European Loanwords in Modern Chinese

c. Sino-Japanese Loanwords in Modern Chinese

D. Return Graphic Loans: Kanji Terms Derived from Classical Chinese

E. A Sampling of Suffixed and Prefixed Compounds from ModernJapanese

F. Transliterations from English, French, and German

G. Transliterations from Russian

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Character List

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-5036-1575-8

OCLC:

1312726243