A Study On Canonization And Recanonization Of Ode To The West Wind In China

Ode to the West Wind is an immortal poem written by the distinguished British romantic poet Shelley in 1819. In the poem, Shelley expressed his revolutionary spirit of fighting against the darkness and longing for the bright, and also expressed his optimistic belief on the victory of revolution in future through his profound depiction of the image of the west wind. Because of this, Ode to the West Wind became one of a few British and American poems translated in China in the 1920 s and occupied an irreplaceable position in the hearts of Chinese readers.This paper, on the basis of the latest results of related literature research, found that there were something worth renewal and scrutiny in the former studies of the translation of Ode to the West Wind, especially the early studies, for the role of ideology and poetics factors had not been investigated deeply. In addition, the previous studies paid too much attention to the manipulation of external environment on the translation activities and were short of discussions about the role of translation on the propagation and canonization of the works. Because of this, this paper combined text and cultural factors, re-examined the canonization and recanonization of Ode to the West Wind in China, and divided the whole process into four stages according to the translation and acceptance of the work: the early stage of translation from the May 4th Movement to the days before the founding of the People’s Republic of China(PRC); the slow translation in the early years after the founding of the PRC; the reconstruction of classic status of Ode to the West Wind after the reform and opening up in China, in which the banned poem became the popular and then the modern classic; and the new challenges encountered in the propagation of the work from the early 21 st century up to now.This paper was mainly based on the manipulation theory of Lefevere. Methods such as case study and comparison were used in argumentation. By adopting the method of case study and combining historical description with theoretical explanation, the author reexamined the translating and spreading of Ode to the West Wind in our country. First of all, by reviewing Shelley’s literary works and the canonization of Ode to the West Wind in the western world, the romantic poetics nature of the work was determined. On this basis, the translation activities of Ode to the West Wind since the 1920 s have been studied from synchronic and diachronic perspectives in chronological sequence, on the topics of the translation background, text characteristics, publishing status and comments of scholars and readers.This paper found that although the earliest translation of Ode to the West Wind was a product of political ideology, the main factors of the manipulation of ideology were at a macro level of decision-making in translation and the impact of manipulation of poetics on the translation of works and their propagation and canonization in China should not be overlooked. Even today when the literature value of romantic poetry has been accepted in the mainstream culture and literature circles, it is still difficult for the ordinary readers to fully understand and accept the classic poetics of Ode to the West Wind. Therefore, those translators and translations which could direct the readers to understand the work are needed to consolidate the literary status of the work.