A Study On Early English Translation Of Tang Poetry In The Perspective Of Cultural Poetics

This dissertation conducts a study on early English translation of Tang Poetry (EETTP), which includes the translations from whose beginning in19th century to1920s, as a whole. By a comprehensive application of theories and methods such as cultural study, imagology, new criticism and comparative translations, other than the exclusive application of ontological translation studies, the dissertation tries to put the translations back into its historic-cultural Context, examine them from the perspective of the integrated sino-western poetics, and then make clear the origin and development of EETTP, and that how early translation strategies varied. Besides, through the combination of internal research and external research, this dissertation tries to examine that how the background of sino-western cultural communication evolved, and how this evolvement influenced early translation strategies, the cultural identities and poetic characteristics of translations.The dissertation falls into four parts.Part I gives an analysis on that in the Context of Eurocentrism and under the fixed occidental-oriental cultural hierarchy, how the first generation of early translators surveyed and rewrited the Tang poems, that is, how they applied pre-existing styles of English poetry to rewrite Tang poems, transforming the rhythm and metre of the latter, and then tried to domesticate the latter into the system of classic English poetry.Part II classifies the images of China, which were constructed through otherness imagination by the British in whose prime of hegemony, as "Inhumane China","Barbarian China","Antique China" and "Subordinate China", and then analyzes the responses of early translators to these images-resistance, acquiesce or’approval. Furthermore, this Part will investigate the influence of their responses on EETTP by close reading on their translation works.Part Ⅲ gives a diachronic research on the translation methods of early translators from the perspectives of religion. This Part tries to discover that in the historical course of the western decline beginning during the First World War, the methods of early translators altered, from Christianizing to maintaining identities of Chinese religions, and then to de-religionizing.Part IV gives a further analysis on that how the second generation of early translators displaced domestication strategy with foreignization strategy from the First World War to1920s. Along with the decline of Eurocentrism and the rise of sino-western complementarity theory, the translators started to value the preservation of original styles and poetic characteristics of Tang poems, in order that a foreignized translation could assist the modernization of English poetry.