Stephen Owen's Treatment Of The Chinese Literary Criticism Terms

The Chinese literary criticism terms, with their uniqueness, complexity and the difficulty of translating are always confusing the western Sinologists, and many of them have studied this problem. Stephen Owen, the professor of Harvard University, who is well-known for his excellent understanding of both traditional Chinese literature and western literature, translated and explained numerous Chinese literary criticism according the text while researched the Chinese literary criticism terms in a special way in his book Readings in Chinese Literary Thought which is written for introducing the "real appearance" of Chinese literary criticism to the western world with his own learning and teaching experience.When facing the perceptual ambiguous Chinese literary criticism terms, Stephen Owen admit that translating them into English is a hard job. for there is no equal term in the western literary criticism. However, the elaboration may remedy this defect. Therefore, on one hand he jumps into the Chinese literature tradition by using many methods of ancient Chinese scholars to comprehend and analyze the Chinese literary criticism terms, such as perceptual reading, critical interpretation of ancient texts and taking the annotating tradition of Classics into account. Hence, he could find a lot of subtlety that many western researchers fail to grasp. On the other hand, he went beyond the Chinese literature tradition by using the western logical analysis and rational thinking. That breaks the stereotyped way of Chinese researchers, making the terms easier to understand on the theoretical plane. His study on Chinese literary criticism terms in the inter-cultural perspective could not only help the western researchers who are confused by the Chinese literary criticism terms, but also help us comprehend our traditional literary criticism better.This thesis selects the fourth part which translated and studied Lu Chi's "Wen Fu"(An Poetic Exposition on Literature) of that book as an example, and discusses the treatment of Stephen Owen of the terms one by one, taking the other books of his, the other translations of Wen Fu and the studies of the Chinese literary criticism terms of other Sinologist into account. This thesis studies how Stephen Owen dealt with the Chinese literary criticism terms by the means of close reading, statistics, concluding and analysis, then points out the contribution and insufficiency of his treatment with the purpose of contributing to the domestic Stephen Owen study and the study of Chinese literary criticism terms.This thesis can be divided three parts. The first part is the introduction which exposits that acquiring the academic achievements of Sinologists is important to the domestic study of Chinese literary criticism. The recent researching situation of this topic and the insufficiency is also reviewed.The second part introduces the academic career and works of Stephen Owen, showing the feature and excellence of the book Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, Then finds out the difficulty Stephen Owen faced when treating the Chinese literary criticism terms and the methods that he could use for reference through discussing the other Sinologists'treatment of the terms.The third part analyzes Stephen Owen's understanding, translation and explanation of each terms meticulously, making comparison with the other translations, and points out the special view.The forth part concludes seven methods used by Stephen Owen:First, he understands the specific meaning and the implication of the terms according the historical context. Second, he takes the other researchers'opinions into consideration, and then shows his own judgment. Third, he does not willing to use the western literary criticism terms which is seemingly similar to the Chinese terms, even if that produces the awkwardness in translation. Some difficult and important terms are followed by the Romanized Chinese term directly. Forth, he explains the terms in multi-aspects with the literature tradition both in China and western countries in order to make the readers know them better. Fifth, he gathers some terms together to be systems according the inner context of the text and the relation between the terms, then analysis them. Sixth, he lets the readers "meet" these terms in different context, so that they can master these terms flexibly and all-sidedly. Seven, he explains these terms in the "Glossary of Basic Terms" which is like a dictionary. At the same time, this thesis researches how can these methods apply to practice in details. At last, this thesis points out the contribution as well as the insufficiency of Stephen Owen's treatment. In the end. this thesis concludes the achievement of Stephen Owen on the Chinese literary criticism, followed by the suggestions that how to advance the translating and spreading of Chinese literary criticism in the western world as well as how to carry the domestic research on Chinese literary criticism a step forward.