Translated Classic Novels From Late Qing To Early Republic Of China & The Modern Transformation Of Chinese Literature

Largely due to the extensive western novel-translating movement at the time of late Qing and early Republic of China, Chinese literature has been going through a modern transformation. The novel-translating event in itself was the sign that the Chinese literature was taking the reshaping. Novels, by that time, have been dramatically adopted as one form of decent Chinese literature instead of vulgar ones overnight. The change implies that the Chinese literature has been placing into a drastic transit period that directly attributes to the literature theories and thoughts basing on western literature. It was a revolution initiated by Liang Qichao and other scholars over novels. In the earliest 20 years when Chinese novel modernized itself at late Qing to early Republic of China, translated novels abroad had to compete with the original novels home in the market which not only played a decisive role in the modern transformation of novels, but the translated novels turned out to be a prominent carrier of novel revolution.Language as the outer appearance of literature, theme in which literature spirit embodies and structure where art schemata is built, these three factors of translated classic novels published at late Qing to early Republic of China have taken a pioneering exploration bearing transformational significance. The translated books of that time were somewhat far inferior to those after the May Fourth Movement, owing to non-profession. Yet, there were ones superior in language, theme and art schemata. These works have done efforts for modern transformation in Chinese literature. Without the language limits that only the mainstream discourse prevails later, those non-professional translators let their language arts have free expression, contributing to much more diverse and heterogeneous literature pursuit which is of transformational significance. This paper, in regard to the gap that no systematic study has been done, attempts to work on it.This paper is divided into six chapters. In the First Chapter of introduction, the concept of Translated Classic Novels from late Qing to early Republic of China is defined and its relations with the Modern Transformation of Chinese Literature are briefly explored. In addition, this chapter also deals with the literature review related to this topic.Chapter Two discusses Classics'Discourse and classics construction from the Chinese modern literature perspective. Several issues that previous scholars condemned over translated literature at late Qing to early Republic of China, like the partial attitude in selecting the originals, deficiency in classic works and uneven proportion of refined literature to popular literature will be treated with Classics'Discourse as the starting point. Translated novels by Lin Shu are taken as a case in this chapter to discuss the possibility of literature reconstruction.Issues on Translated Classic Novels from late Qing to early Republic of China and the language's modern transformation of Chinese literature are the focuses in Chapter Three. On the ground of the influence from translated literature language, the inborn languages for classical Chinese literature including classical, hemi-classical and vernacular Chinese have turned into many forms and variants and categorized at many levels, which is described in this chapter in details. What's more, the diverse trials of the novel translators at that period of time are valued because Chinese written language might face numerous choices and possibilities before it eventually shaped.The Fourth Chapter expounds on the theme of translated classic novels from late Qing to early Republic of China, analyzing respectively the four dimensions (nationalism, love, humanism and individualism) over the translated works of the earliest twenty years. This chapter manages to illustrate that these translated works have successfully brought modern transformation concept to the ideas of Chinese traditional literature on which modern literature concerns a lot.The Fifth Chapter deals with the third aspect of the translated works of late Qing to early Republic of China: form. Quoted with the concept of Art Schemata proposed by Forster, an English critic, the author probes into the transitional roles the translated works played which have given an impetus while Chinese traditional novel schemata (Chinese Vernacular Novels with each chapter headed by a couplet giving the list of its content, Short Narrative Novels and Short Classical Romantic novels are included) turned to the modern schemata (including the modern novels on the long and short basis). This chapter, moreover, selects some chapters to study from Zhou Brothers'translated Collection of Foreign Stories, the most representative works in the first decade of the 20th century, and Zhou Shoujuan's European and American Famous Short Stories featuring the second decade of the 20th century (before the literature movement of May 4th ). The author pointed out that Collection of Foreign Stories unfortunately met its doom commercially and was long undervalued in the circle of literature as a result of its radical ideas in comparison to the dominating ones then. The archaic wording in this translated works was not the only fact leading to its failure. European and American Famous Short Stories while, embodying the transitional literature features from the era of New Novels to the era of May 4th New Literature, somewhat agreed to Zhou Brothers'works, has taken a mysterious and shady style making possible the Zhou brothers speak highly of it.Chapter Six involves the summarizing the transformational language, theme and art schemata of Chinese literature under the influence of translated novels; and furthermore, the last chapter also tries to tap some issues like literature translation skills concerning modern transformation from late Qing dynasty up to today, as well as the practical significance of literature translation from late Qing to early Republic of China upon current literature writing and translation.