The Ideal Woman In Liang Qichao's Narrative

Although Liang Qichao(1873-1929),as a scholar and philosopher,never used the term “women's rights” in any of his writings,yet his arguments for improving women's lot,including particularly abolishing the practice of footbinding and providing women with education,attracted popular attention,exerting great influence on later scholars.Being considered as the pioneer of China's feminist movement,Liang imagined a modern European way of life as the exemplar for China by translating Western feminist works,calling for gender equality,freedom of marriage,and education for women.In particular,his translation of Madame Roland,as a primary narrative method,exercised the greatest influence on the masses' narrative of females.The most inspiring part of Liang's Madame Roland is his translation of conceptual metaphors,especially those that are related to females.His narrative of woman,as “the mother of the whole nation”,in part reflected his personal attitude towards Chinese women.It helped,in part,to shape Chinese women's identity by way of setting the model,Madame Roland for Chinese females.Therefore,it is worthwhile to examine how Liang narrated the characteristics of Madame Roland in his translation,which enhanced Chinese feminism,with specific reference to his Chinese translation of female conceptual metaphors in Madame Roland.Drawing on Conceptual Blending Theory,this study will examine how Liang negotiated various narratives in the process of his translation of conceptual metaphors concerning females,as well as the translation strategies he adopted.Conceptual Blending Theory,is the theory of cognition developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner(2002).According to this theory,elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are “blended” in a subconscious process,which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language.ConceptualBlending has been proposed as a model for a variety of cognitive activities,including translation.The process of conceptual blending involves the construction of relations between several different mental spaces in a conceptual integration network.These mental spaces include two or more input spaces,a generic space,and a blended space.Elements in the generic space each map to an element in each of the input spaces,and represent what the input spaces have in common.In addition,selective mapping between elements across input spaces occurs,along with selective projection of elements from input spaces to the blended space.In terms of status about women,different narratives from source text,Chinese culture and Liang's mental space were mapped onto different spaces.And this thesis will illustrate how Liang negotiated these narratives when translating Madame Roland.It attempts to reveal some patterns followed by Liang,as these translations of conceptual metaphors related to females not only conditioned the way people challenged the traditional women's identity in the late Qing Dynasty(1644-1912),but also evoked and consolidated the newer and broader public narratives of women circulating in China.By analyzing Liang's rendering of Madame Roland,especially with reference to translation of conceptual metaphors related to women,it is found that,based on women's traditional role as the mother,Liang enabled the independent ideal woman,Madame Roland,to be accepted in the late Qing Dynasty as the mother of the nation.Likewise,the cause of saving the Late Qing China,which was incorporated into the ideal woman,made the ideal women prevail in China,especially among intellectuals.Hence,the narrative of striving for women's rights is the sub-narrative of the narrative of saving the country.Furthermore,by analyzing Liang's narrative of the beauty in white and Madame Roland,who acts in a masculine way,it is seen that Liang was still under the influence of traditional narrative's of women as accessories of men.