Looking Back On The Lost Spiritual Home: The Myth - The Prototype As The Threshold Of Literary Translation Research

This study is an interdisciplinary theoretical construction with specific application to translations of metaphorical literary works modeled on mythical archetypes. It is also a response to some translation theorists' call for a return to translation studies proper, which reflects their increasing worries about the skepticism resulting from the "deconstructive paradigm" and about the tendency to replace translation studies with political concerns in the "cultural turn". It contends that there should be a return to both literariness as well as language in literary translation. Since anything in existence often exhibits its nature in its origin, such a return entails going all the way back to the ultimate origin of language and literature—myth.By introducing myth-archetype theory into literary translation studies, the author attempts to find a way out of the impasse of deconstructive paradigm by returning to the origin, universality and wholeness of literature. The dissertation stresses universality behind differences and order behind fragmentation, hoping to help translators and translation researchers restore their holy worship for the origination of both language and literature. Quite different from traditional translation studies which overstress rationality, it highlights the unconscious elements involved in literary translation by attending to the poetic effects of translations and the translators' somatic experience. It is especially applicable to translation criticism of metaphorical literary works modeled on mythical archetypes.The whole dissertation consists of five parts. The first part makes a brief review of relevant studies on myths and archetypes. The second part provides justifications for the introduction of myth-archetype theory into literary translation studies. The third part includes three chapters altogether and conducts a tentative investigation into three basic theoretical problems of literary translation studies in the perspective myth-archetype theory. The fourth part intends to construct a translation criticism method on the basis of Northrop Frye's "stand-back" method of myth-archetype criticism. The fifth part applies this method in translation criticism practice. The first chapter makes a brief review of relevant studies on myths and archetypes in different ages and disciplines to clear the ground for subsequent theoretical construction. It shows that "myth" and "archetype" are two closely interrelated concepts: the former is the linguistic vehicle of the latter, and the latter the stable elements in the former; much understanding of the latter results from studies on the former. This chapter also presents some studies on literary translation in the perspective of myth-archetype theory.Chapter Two is devoted to proving that it is adequately justifiable to introduce myth-archetype theory into literary translation studies because of its close relationship with philosophy, language, literature and culture. Firstly, it was starting from reflections on mythical or metaphorical thinking that Ernst Cassirer laid a new foundation for humanities and their epistemology. Secondly, language is inseparable from myths in its origination and development. Thirdly, literature is claimed to be "displaced myth" and the process of literary creation means the displacement and deformation of archetypes. Lastly, since a myth often embodies a kind of cultural model, the study of it and its relation to translation corresponds with the present "cultural turn" in translation studies. On the whole, this chapter borrows a lot from Northrop Frye's ideas.From Chapter Three to Chapter Five, in the perspective of myth-archetype theory, the author re-examines three basic theoretical issues of literary translation, namely, the translatability of literary works, the nature of literary translation and the translator's psychic structure. Translatability accounts for how literary translation comes into existence, the nature of literary translation defines the way how literary translation exists in one sense, and the translator's psychic structure explains why literary translation exists.On the basis of the stability of archetypes and Frye's descriptions of their various forms, this dissertation studies translatability of literary works by dividing the abstract archetype into four concrete literary elements, i.e. the theme, narrative structure, image and language of literary works. It maintains that primary concern myths explain the commensurability of themes in literature, and the structuralistic studies on the morphology of folk tales and narrative grammar provide evidence for the translatability of deep narrative structure of literary works. In addition, the archetypal image system underlying the metaphorical literary works enables literary works from different cultures to return to the same origin and those within the same cultural system but in different ages to be organized into a unity with its own specific tradition. Since translating involves first of all linguistic transference, Chapter Three highlights linguistic translatability and proposes three types of linguistic archetypes, namely, Walter Benjamin's "pure language", Erich Fromm's "symbolic language" and David Leaning's "mythical language". They demonstrate linguistic translatability from fields of religion, psychology and anthropology respectively.Incorporating the general nature of translating as linguistic transference and the nature of literature as poetic metaphor, Chapter Four tentatively defines literary translation as an art of creating poetic metaphors, i.e. a metaphor-understanding and metaphor-making activity. Chapter Five makes a comparison between literary translation and poetic metaphor from six aspects: etymological studies, innovative creation, co-existence of similarities and differences, partial transference, somatic presence and existential experience. This comparison exhibits the creative, polysemous, experiential and existential nature of literary translation, which is of metaphorical nature and keeps traces of primitive mythical thinking.The irrational elements in myths always give expression to mankind's unconscious emotions and desires, and archetypes represent collective unconsciousness in human mind. Therefore, the introduction of myth-archetype theory requires an inevitable concern on the subjects' unconsciousness involved in literary translation. The dissertation analyzes the translator's psychic structure from three aspects, i.e. collective unconsciousness, social unconsciousness and individual unconsciousness. It holds that as literary works modeled on myth-archetypes reveal mankind's collective unconsciousness, their translations may function as a psychic therapy. Since myths have always been interwoven with cultural and political motivations, literary translation consequently turns out to be a kind of symbolic activity to repress the nation's ideology, determine their social memory and invent a myth of the state. On the basis of Erich Fromm's ideas on social unconsciousness and the theory of identification in psychology, this dissertation re-explains the translation strategies of domestication and foreignization. It argues that domestication results from a nation's collective narcissism and false identification after its escape from freedom, while foreignization releases the repressed unconscious elements in the receiving culture. To be more specific, foreignization heals the metamorphasized language with the foreignized one. It also indicates the translator's metaphorical state of experience with his total empathy for the source text and the author. In the light of the theory of individual unconsciousness, this dissertation extends the meaning of translation and identifies the similarities between literary translation and psychotherapy. In other words, a translator of literary works is both an analyst and an analysand.Translation criticism, in one sense, is a mediator between translation theory and practice; therefore, after theoretical exploration, Chapter Six establishes a translation criticism method according to Frye's "stand-back" method in literary criticism with stresses on the awareness of levels, genres and intertextuality. Level-awareness means criticism upon a translation on four different levels, that is, linguistic signs, multi-level meanings, text structure and archetypal models. Genre-awareness plays a fundamental role in literary translation studies. It provides translators with writing norms and offers translation critics "horizon of expectation", thus becoming the starting point of translation reception and criticism. Furthermore, the differences, hybridization and defining elements of genres make a considerable difference to translation criticism. The existent translation criticism generally focuses on comparison and contrast between a source text and its translations. With the entrance of archetypes, however, an intertextual perspective is added. Translation chains, literary traditions and cultural context function as leading intertextual elements in translation criticism.To prove the feasibility of the "stand-back" method of translation criticism stated in Chapter Six, Chapter Seven evaluates translations of two literary works, one is T. S. Eliot's poem The Wasteland and the other is a classical Chinese novel Journey to the West. These translations are criticized with awareness of levels, genres and intertextuality.As a tentative exploration into literary translation studies in the perspective of myth-archetype theory, this dissertation, in its statement and argumentation, preserves both the structuralists' stress on universality and the deconstructivists' critical and intertextual awareness while avoiding the weak points of their theories. Therefore, it can converge with the present trend of "cultural turn" in translation studies, and avoid the deviation from translation proper caused by the cultural paradigm. Meanwhile, it finds an approach to returning to literariness itself, discovers the unconscious mind hidden behind translating, highlights the level-awareness in literary translation criticism and shows the continuity of ancient traditions to their contemporary development. Hopefully, it will shed new light on the understanding of literary translation as a whole.