On The Rewritings Of On The Road In China

On the Road,the best known novel of Jack Kerouac(1922-1969),published in 1957,and considered as one of the 100 best novels in the world of the 20^th century by many foreign media institutes,has long been considered as the Bible of the Beat Generation.Studies of Kerouac and his novels have been conducted in the US since the mid-1950s.In Lowell, his birthplace,starting from 1987,there is a festival every year,known as "Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Festival",in commemoration of Jack Kerouac as well as an exchange of the studies of his works.However,though this novel had been introduced and translated in China almost half a century ago,the situation of Kerouac and his works has long been unfavorable in our country,which is due to the misunderstanding of the Beat Generation in China since the early 1960s and Kerouac being known as the King of the Beats.Though things have changed a lot and been getting better since the reform and opening up,and especially since the mid-1990s,with more attentions being given to Kerouac and his works,currently there still lacks a systematic and comprehensive study on the situation of On the Road in our country.In view of this,and with AndréLefevere's rewriting concept as the basic theoretical framework,this thesis discusses the main kinds of rewritings having been conducted on the novel in China,i.e.criticisms, translations,historiographies and anthologies.From those criticisms on the novel,it can be seen that before the opening and reform, influenced by ideology and dominant poetics,On the Road had been demonized by the rewriters;from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s,because of the ideological restrictions loosing,On the Road was given the carrot and the stick at the same time;from the mid-1990s,with the Sino-US cooperation and exchange increasing,On the Road began to earn the rewriters' favor.From the novel's four Chinese versions,it can be found that the Si Rong's abridge translation was the product of then ideology with its image being disjointed and uglified;the Tao Yueqing's translation,under the ideology and dominant poetics in our country decreasing their antagonism toward the US,was full of mistranslations and misunderstandings;the Wen Chu-an's translation,with the smooth Sino-US relationship making progress,though canonized by the translator,was also full of mistranslations,giving self-contradictions to the novel and decreasing its readability; the Wang Yongnian's translation,together with its academic exchange with the US increasing,not containing those mistranstations as other Chinese versions,improved the novel's readability,making the plot and language of the novel more reasonable,and helping create the novel's canonization in China.From the rewritings of On the Road in historiographies in our country,it shows that literary history booking containing introductions to the novel only appeared only after the reform and opening up,and though many literary history books concerningthe American literature have been published,few have rewritings to the Beat Bible with the novel playing a minor role in American literary books in our country.From the rewritings of the novel in literary anthologies in our country,it indicates that selective readings containing On the Road also appeared after the reform and opening up,and though there were many foreign literary selective readings,few anthologies contained selective reading from the novel, with the Beat Bible's survival hardly being ensured.In analyzing these rewritings,we could find they have produced different images of the novel,manipulating the fames of On the Road in China,and deeply affected its reception in our country.In doing so,we can have a better understanding of the power of rewriting and the situation of the reception of the Beat Bible in our country.