The Organization of Distance

Poetry, Translation, Chineseness
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-36868-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 141, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 558 g

Reihe: Sinica Leidensia

What makes a Chinese poem “Chinese”? Some call modern Chinese poetry insufficiently Chinese, saying it is so influenced by foreign texts that it has lost the essence of Chinese culture as known in premodern poetry. Yet that argument overlooks how premodern regulated verse was itself created in imitation of foreign poetics. Looking at Bian Zhilin and Yang Lian in the twentieth century alongside medieval Chinese poets such as Wang Wei, Du Fu, and Li Shangyin, The Organization of Distance applies the notions of foreignization and nativization to Chinese poetry to argue that the impression of poetic Chineseness has long been a product of translation, from forces both abroad and in the past.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Klein, Lucas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Ost- & Südostasiatische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgements

Conventions

List of Figures

Introduction: The Great Wall and the Tower of Babel: On Chinese Poetry as Translation

Part 1

1 Discerning the Soil: Dual Translation and the World Poetics of Bian Zhilin

2 By the Brush: Yang Lian and the Translated Poetics of Ethnography

Part 2

3 Indic Echoes: Form, Content, and Contested Chineseness in Six Dynasties and Tang Regulated Verse

4 Composing Foreign Words: Canons of Nativization in the Poetry of Du Fu

5 An Awakening Dream: Borders and Communication in the Translation of Li Shangyin

Conclusion: Realms of Transformation: Chinese Dreams and Translational Realities

Character Glossary of Names, Titles, and Terms

Works Cited

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lucas Klein (PhD Yale) is Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. In addition to translations of Xi Chuan, Mang Ke, and Li Shangyin, he has published critical and scholarly work in LARB, CLEAR, Comparative Literature Studies, and PMLA.