A Comparative Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of Gulliver’s Travels From The Perspective Of New Historicism

Gulliver s Travels, considered as a great satirical novel, is the masterpiece of the great English satirist Jonathan Swift. The New Historicists think that history can influence texts and meanwhile it also can be affected by texts, and they also put emphasis on a text that should be understood from "political aspect","ideological aspect", and "cultural aspect". Therefore, the author of this thesis analyzes the two Chinese versions of Gulliver’s Travels by contrastive research from the perspectives of the most important concepts of New Historicism,"the historicity of the texts" and the "textuality of history", which were put forward by Louis Adrian Montrose and "the thick description" which was borrowed from Geertz.The author adopts the qualitative method in this thesis. The thesis contains six parts. Chapter one briefly introduces the research background, the literature review of the translations of Gulliver s Travels and its translations and researches in China, and the author briefly introduces the two Chinese versions of Gulliver’s Travels which the author chooses in the thesis. Chapter two is the theoretical foundation about New Historicism, which mainly introduces the theory of "the textuality of history","the historicity of the texts" and "the thick description". In chapter three, chapter four and chapter five, the author respectively analyzes the theory of New Historicism adopted in Gulliver s Travels by contractive research from the perspectives of "the textuality of history","the historicity of the texts" and "the thick description", and these chapters are also the basis part in this thesis. Chapter six is the significance of the study and the author also simply points out the limitations of the study and suggestions for future study.The author intends to solve the following problems in this thesis. The first problem is whether New Historicism can shed light on translation practice; the second problem is how New Historicism affects and guides translation through analyzing the two Chinese versions of Gulliver’s Travels from the perspectives of "the historicity of the texts","the textuality of history" and "the thick description". These three perspectives are the most important concepts in New Historicism.