Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Non-Latin script record Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-96)

Quels étaient les modernismes existant en Asie de l’Est pendant les années 1920 et 1930 où la première vague des mouvements modernistes a eu lieu ? À travers les études du transfert littéraire de Paul Morand à partir de la France vers la Chine, en passant par le Japon, on s’interroge sur la façon dont les acteurs du monde littéraire japonais et chinois impliqués dans la réception littéraire de Morand ont pensé le modernisme et la modernité. On compare les réflexions des communautés littéraires des deux pays vis-à-vis du modernisme au sein de cette réception morandienne en trois grandes parties : tout d’abord, les traducteurs principaux japonais et chinois des œuvres morandiennes, Horiguchi Daigaku et Dai Wangshu ; ensuite, les critiques qui ont introduit Morand dans le débat du modernisme des années 1920 et 1930, allant jusqu’à créer un champ littéraire dédié à la réception de Morand. Dans le cas japonais, ce sont Chiba Kameo, la communauté littéraire établie, l’École des sensations nouvelles japonaise et sa revue de cercle L’Époque littéraire. Tandis que dans le cas chinois, ce sont l’École des sensations nouvelles chinoise et sa revue littéraire affilée Trains sans rail ; enfin, les deux écrivains représentatifs des Écoles des sensations nouvelles japonaise et chinoise, Yokomitsu Riichi et Liu Na’ou, dont les styles littéraires ont souvent été comparés avec celui de Morand. Par les analyses de ces trois parties, nous voudrions présenter les configurations particulières du modernisme en Asie de l’Est de l’époque. / What were the modernisms of East Asia during the 1920s and the 1930s? By studying the literary journey of Paul Morand from France to China via Japan, we question how the intellectuals of Japanese and Chinese literary world who were involved in this literary reception during the 1920s and the 1930s, considered modernism through French ideas. The Japanese and the Chinese reflections on modernism are compared in three main aspects: first, the translation of Morand’s works done by Horiguchi Daigaku and Dai Wangshu. Second, the criticisms which involved Morand into the debate concerning modernism in this period, created a literary field for the reception of Morand in these two countries. For the Japanese case, the parties that were concerned the most were Chiba Kameo, the established literary community, the Japanese Neo-Perception School and her coterie magazine Age of Literature. Whereas for the Chinese case, the Chinese Neo-Perception School and her affiliated magazine Trains without Railway were the most relevant. Third, two representative writers of the Neo-Perception Schools, Yokomitsu Riichi and Liu Na’ou, whose literary styles were often compared to those of Morand’s. Through the analysis of these three aspects, we seek to show the configurations of modernism in East Asia.

Dai Wangshu 戴望舒 (1905-1950) was a prolific translator, working on both French and Hispanic literature. However, his translation work has often been considered relevant only to the extent that it helped him to develop a self-fashioned modernist style in his own poetic writing. Moreover, no systematic study has been conducted on his interest in Hispanic literature, particularly on his translation of Federico García Lorca’s poetry, a project to which he dedicated over half of his professional career but left unfinished. In addition, investigations on Dai have been generally approached from a narrow theoretical perspective that has risked overlooking the social factors that affected his literary activities. This thesis, therefore, aims to reveal the extent and the way in which translating Lorca into Chinese contributed to the establishment and consolidation of Dai’s position as a social agent in the field of literary production in China. The methodology is constructed in an attempt to reconcile a sociological perspective on translation drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory with a more interpretive understanding of literary writing based on the notion of transculturation inherited from Latin American cultural studies. Examining Dai’s translation of Lorca’s poetry from this integrated perspective allows foregrounding the heterogeneity and multiplicity of Dai’s literary dispositions, at both a macroscopic and a microscopic level, without ignoring the social factors involved in his translation practice. By embedding Lorca’s poetry in the field of literary production in China, Dai privileged a particular set of possibilities over the others, both literary and ideological at the same time. This kind of behaviour in Dai can be interpreted in terms of transculturation and observed in various textual domains, involving formal literary elements, discourses and worldviews. Furthermore, Dai’s project of translating Lorca’s poetry, which expanded over a three-decade period, allows establishing striking connections among literary journals and groups at various temporal and spatial locations, each of them associated with different and often competing views on translation, literature and politics. In sum, Dai’s translation project of Lorca played a pivotal role in establishing and consolidating Dai’s position in the literary scene to the extent that his status as a literary figure was more determined by his translation work than by his own poetic writing. Dai’s translation of Lorca involved not only transculturating a specific text-type, the romance, but also a particular view on the role of literature in society that, unexpectedly, positioned him as an author opportunistically committed to the Communist cause. This investigation contributes new evidence that helps to question some long-standing assumptions both in studies on Dai and in reflections on the role of translation in Chinese literature. In addition, it allows arguing for a study of such a role at large without the need to subsume translation to any other sort of practice.