Contrastive Studies On Three English Versions Of Chu Ci From Poetic Perspective

Chu ci, as the origin of romantic poetry in Chinese, is based on the rivers' culture in southern part of China, while was prosperous and influential in Spring and Autumn Period. In 2000, Chu ci has been farmed as international classic work, so it is natural that a good qualified translation and numerous criticism on the translation have been paid close attention to in the field of literature and literary translation.This thesis borrowed Henri Meschonnic's point of view of translation poetics and focuses on the two important aspects of poetics in translation:"similarity in spirit"and "similarity in form". Through descriptive method, the author firstly reviews and summarized up to now what have been achieved in Chu ci's translation and researches.Then the thesis tries to make a contrast among three English versions form Xu Yuanchong's Zhuo Zhenying's and Hawks' by which the thesis attempts to find how rhyme and rhythm have been realized in their respective versions, and if the restructuring patterns of poetic lines could help to reach their expected rhyme and rhythm. Through this argumentative statement, the thesis is intended to answer if Henri Meschonic's view about the possibility of reproducing similarity in poetic form can be proved and fully explained by the different three versions.In terms of the possibility of "similarity in spirit", the thesis will mainly discuss images and sentiment. As to image, it will include images of plants, figures and God.After comparison about the above points, it draws the conclusion that each of the original text both in form and spirit as much as possible, although different translations adopt their specific approaches to deal with various images, their purpose of translating is clear and consistent with each other. And it also proves that most occasions it is feasible that Chinese ancient poetry can be translated into metrical poetry in a given target language.