A Stylistic Study Of Pianwen In Hong Lou Meng And Its Translation

The classical Chinese novels, masterly handling of almost all genres, have beendeeply influenced by both the narrative of Records of the Grand Historians (《史记》)and lyric poems, which attach poetic qualities to the novels. Incorporating Pianwen(or parallel prose) into the narrative is considered as one form of “poetic writings” innovels. With the musical sounds and rhythms, adorned wording, parallel structure anda meaningful textual form, Pianwen is employed to depict places and characters inclassical Chinese novels, which is regarded as one of the greatest literary features inChina. The classical Chinese novel Hong Lou Meng in Qing Dynasty has achieved agreat success in portraying places and characters with Pianwen. The portrayals are sovivid that they evoke readers’ association of beautiful landscapes and attractivepersons.Stylistics has been widely applied to literary and translation studies, examiningthe linguistic choices made by the author or translator and the literary functions thosechoices serve. The stylistic elements primarily consist of phonology, lexis, syntax andtext. They are not only closely related to rhetoric, but also connected with theideology, society, culture and etc.From the perspective of stylistics, this paper explores Pianwen in Hong LouMeng (rendered as The Story of the Stone or A Dream of Red Mansions) and itsEnglish translation. Making stylistic comparison between Chinese Pianwen for settingand characterization in Hong Lou Meng and the correspondent English versions, thispaper investigates the methods the translators adopt to remedy the loss in translation.Investigation into the stylistic elements in both Chinese Pianwen and its translationalso reveals the aesthetic features of the classical Chinese fiction and the limits oftranslating these features.First, an overview of the thesis is given, together with the research significance,questions and methodology. The second chapter does the literature review,introducing recent researches on Pianwen and those in Hong Lou Meng. In the nexttwo chapters, Chinese Pianwen for setting and characterization in Hong Lou Meng along with their translations are illustrated from the aspects of phonological, lexical,syntactic and textual properties. Finally, the research conclusion is drawn togetherwith research limitations and future studies.The finding shows that Hawkes has translated most essential pieces of Pianwenfor setting and characterization into poetic lines, which approximate the poeticqualities of the source text in phonological, lexical, syntactic and textual aspects. Theapparent verbosity of Hawkes’ translation probably aims to maintain the generalsource style in his translation. In contrast, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang haverendered those Pianwen into prose form with more concise vocabulary, which keepsthe target text in accordance with the narrative context. His translation, however, hasinadequately remedied the loss incurred by the shifts of phonological, syntactic andtextual properties. Hence, I suggest that Pianwen should be translated into the poeticform whose poetic devices can effectively render the poetic and aesthetic elements inthe source text.