A Study On The Story Of Kun And Peng In The English-speaking World:Based On The Analysis Of Translation And Interpretation Cases

Zhuangzi's work begins with a striking story about Kun and Peng.This story is not only predicting the unique writing style of Zhuangzi,but also indicating some important topics of the whole book.Based on the Chinese commentary of the story,this thesis will focus on some translations and interpretations about the story of Kun and Peng in the English-speaking world.There are three parts in the thesis,they are preface,text,and conclusion.The first chapter is preface,which describes the motivation and aim of the thesis,expounds the mentality and method of the research,gives a review about research of the same topic in recent years,and introduces the main translations and interpretations of the story in English-speaking world.What's more,different views about versions of the story will be interpreted to make a good preparation of the analysis of the story.The second chapter is focusing on three groups of key worlds in the story,which consist of "kun" and "peng","North Darkness" and "South Darkness","cicada","young dove"and "marsh sparrow".By comparing different English versions of these words,I will point out in what aspects these translations express the same meanings as the original and in what aspects they are different and may lead to totally different associations.The third chapter is about some important interpretations of the story in the the English-speaking world.There are three parts in this chapter.The first two parts mainly compare the interpretations of two old questions in the study of the story,which are "the distinction of the small and the big" and the "change " of Kun and Peng.The first part will select Legge,Kuang-Ming Wu,and Williams as representative cases for analysis of the three kinds of different explanations of the "the distinction of the small and the big" in the English-speaking world.Similarities and differences of interpretations between the native world and the English-speaking world will be concerned.In the second part,the study of Kuang-Ming Wu,Allison,Ziporyn and Williams will be taken into account as the analysis of the "change" of Kun and Peng in the English-speaking world.The third part pay close attention to a kind of interpretation from a new perspective from the English professional readers,that is the perspective of cosmogony or the Creation which Kuang-ming Wu and Thomas Michael adopted,although both of them didn't use the term in the usual sense.Michael regarded the story as one of the numerous instances in which the early Taoist writings call upon mythological images and their symbolic attributes in discursive production of their own depictions of the generation of the world.While Kuang-Ming Wu took the beginning as a parody of standard cosmogony.The fourth chapter is to discuss four kinds of different referring expressions of the thinking mode in the story of Kun and Peng.Allison referred the story as a myth.Williams took it as a fable.Legge viewed it as Chinese "Yu Yen".While Kuang-ming Wu named it as a "story"(The word "story" was not used from the usual sence,but from a philosophical sense.Kuang-ming Wu believed that it is a kind of traditional thinking style of ancient Chinese).This chapter is going to explore in what sense they used these referring expressions and the inspirations or misunderstandings they may bring to understand the story.The last part is conclusion,which is try to think deeply why there are so many different interpretations about the story of Kun and Peng,based on the previous chapters.