Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hong Kong Baptist University, 2003. / Thesis submitted to the Dept. of Chinese Language and Literature. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-232).

No description available.

My dissertation is a comparative analysis of the juncture at which Chinese poetry became “modern.” The catalyst for this development was the early twentieth-century translation into Chinese of the European Romantics, which was contemporaneous with changes and permutations within the “herbs and beauty” myth crucial to the conception of the Chinese poet. I argue that the convergence of the two serve as an anchor for examining China’s literary responses, in both form and content, to drastic social change brought about by rapid modernization and dramatic revolutions. Through a diverse selection of written and visual texts, I scrutinize and accentuate two ambivalences that, I argue, China’s struggle for modernity required and to which the “herbs and beauty” myth gives form. On the one hand, I locate a moment when the essential femininity of the traditional Chinese poet (man or woman) came to be displaced onto the Western new woman, as the Southern Society, a large community of Chinese poets in the early 20th century, revamped the “herbs and beauty” allegory through their project of translating the European Romantics into Chinese. On the other hand, I investigate how modern Chinese poets and intellectuals, torn between their residual attachment to a hallowed national literary tradition and their new quest for non-indigenous (European) sources, partook in the difficult moments of China’s modern transformation by constantly redefining the interconnections between the beautiful and the virtuous through translation and transcultural relation. In each instance in question, the influence of translation causes a shift in modes of representation that require new definitions of what it means to be a poet in an increasingly unspiritual and commodified world: together, these examples enable me to conceptualize the poetics and politics of what I call “translated affect” and “affective modernity.” / 10000-01-01

Shen Congwen [沈从文] (1902 – 1988), the famous Chinese writer most active from the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s, took particular interest in music throughout his literary career. From Shen’s earliest works, folksongs feature in his regional stories about West Hunan, his home region. These songs not only provide the stories with a special local colour, but also indicate Shen’s strong connection with Western anthropology and psychology. From the mid-1930s, Shen developed a passion for Western classical music. He stated on several occasions that he wished he could use the method of musical composition in his writing, even though he never attempted to learn to compose. This thesis will investigate Shen’s insistence on the assumption that the method of musical composition – especially the use of ‘harmony’ – would make literary works more beautiful and infinite. Shen’s discussion of Western classical music also points to the connection between music and abstraction. In Shen’s later career, he seems to be consistently pursuing the beauty of abstraction. At the same time, he writes about ‘soundless music’, which goes beyond concrete music such as folksongs or Western classical music. In the analysis of Shen’s ideas on music, one question remains: what are the possible sources of these ideas? Shen started writing after May Fourth Movement, a movement that massively involved learning from the West. His career thrived while socialising with a group of Chinese writers whose works bear evident marks of Western literature, and some of whom were also the translators of many Western works. Furthermore, Shen’s ideas on music appear to reflect those of Western literature, especially modern literature. This thesis will consider possible influences on Shen, starting with an examination of what Shen might have read or known about Western literary ideas. Finally, according to the evidence uncovered in my research, this thesis will propose a comparative study between possible Western sources of influence and Shen’s ideas on music, focusing on the influence of Western anthropology, psychology, Goethe (1749 – 1832), French Symbolism, Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), and Joyce (1882 – 1941).

No description available.

Many people in the past praised Chinese literature partly because of the glamour revealed in splendid poetry, and in creating these poetry male poets have proved their excellence. Conversely the contributions of women poets have seemed much less significant in the history of traditional Chinese literature. Among the relatively small number of famous women poets in China, Zhu Shuzhen (11357-1180?) is certainly worthy of discussion, but she has not received much critical attention, in part because of the lack of reliable biographical information. Although some of Zhu Shuzhen's poems have been seen by some scholars as disgraceful, it is nevertheless valuable to explore the inner world and poetic indications of the voice projected from the poems in an objective way. However, as the number of poems attributed to Zhu Shuzhen is large, despite living under an atmosphere that discouraged the writing of poetry by women, her name is undoubtedly significant in the development of female poetry. Western theories of gender representation and the development of self in literature have been used as the main sources and frameworks for research in this thesis. The aesthetic values in Zhu Shuzhen's original verse have been retained through my translations by selecting the best appropriate original versions in different editions. Comparisons between Zhu Shuzhen and Yu Xuanji fa, (8447-868?), a woman poet in the Tang Dynasty, reveal similarities and differences which distinguish the two in terms of their resistance to the code that cast women as inferior. This thesis will analyse Zhu Shuzhen's ambivalent mind as revealed in her poetry through her contradictory statements, ideas and images regarding the notion of being a good wife on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of a woman suspected of conducting an extramarital affair.

Qian Zhongshu's novel Fortress Besieged (Wei cheng), employing a wide variety of literary devices and abounding in cultural references, is a piece of literature exceptionally difficult to translate. This thesis identifies the main categories of problems the translator will encounter during its translation. Taking the English, French and Spanish versions of the novel as its ground, the thesis investigates what the paths are that the translator chooses when translating literary works culturally remote from the target language reader. The author starts out with the theories of Jiří Levý and approaches translation problems from a functional standpoint. He finds out, however, that a successful translation requires an effort not only from the translator but equally from the reader.

This study consist of a comparative analysis of the nostalgic female characters in Pai Hsien-yung's two short stories: "Wandering in a Garden, Waking from a Dream," and "A Celestial in Mundane Exile," and Tennessee Williams's two plays: The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Beginning with a brief discussion of the socio-historical background of Pai's Republican China and Williams's American South, a general analysis of previous scholarship on Pai and Williams's works follows. The analysis of the selected works focuses on the stylistic and symbolic features in Pai and Williams's characterizations, such as Pai's use of stream-of-consciousness, reference to the k'un opera Peony Pavilion, elaboration over descriptive details of the setting, symbolic use of clothing and accessories, and Williams's symbolic use of music genres: "Blues Piano" and the "Varsouviana Polka," and his use of rhythm and other poetic elements in his characters' speech, in the style of "personal lyricism." My study is based on a close-reading analysis of the selected works by Pai and Williams. Their humanistic approach to their respective declining aristocratic cultures and their sympathy for the nostalgic female characters' tragedies will be more apparent when the study focuses mostly on the texts themselves. Their similar belief in the universal values, such as compassion, sacrifice, and courage, has made their works comparable. In the discussion of themes, the idea of the humanistic role of literature articulated by William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize Speech is also used to connect Pai and Williams's sympathetic approach to their characters. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

This is a two-pronged study of how the Chinese and Tibetan literary traditions have become intertwined in the modern era. Setting out from the contention that the study of minority literatures in China must be fundamentally multilingual in its approach, this dissertation investigates how Tibetans were written into Chinese literature, and how Tibetans themselves adopted and adapted Chinese literary discourses to their own ends. It begins with Lu Xun and the formative literary conceptions of nation in the late Qing and Republican periods – a time when the Tibetan subject was fundamentally absent from modern Chinese literature – and then moves to the 1980s, when Tibet and Tibetans belatedly, and contentiously, became valid subject matter for Han Chinese writers. The second aspect of the project situates modern Tibetan-language literature, which arose from the 1980s onwards, within the literary and intellectual context of modern China. I read Döndrup Gyel, modern Tibetan literature’s “father figure,” as working within unmistakably Lu Xun-ian paradigms, I consider the contradictions that arose when Tsering Döndrup’s short story “Ralo” was interpreted as a Tibetan equivalent of “The True Story of Ah Q,” and I analyze the rise of a “Tibetan May Fourth Movement” in the 2000s, which I argue presented a selective reading of modern China’s intellectual history. Throughout, I focus on the intersections and divergences at play and examine the ways in which these texts navigate complex and conflicting discourses of nationalism, statism, and colonialism. The conclusions of this research point us toward significant theoretical reconceptualizations of literary practices in the People’s Republic of China, which now include not only a vast body of Chinese-language writing on minority peoples, but also numerous minority-language literatures and distinct “national” literary traditions.