This book develops interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to analyzing the cross-cultural travels of traditional Chinese fiction. It ties this genre to issues such as translation, world literature, digital humanities, book culture, and images of China. Each chapter offers a case study of the historical and cultural conditions under which traditional Chinese fiction has traveled to the English-speaking world, proposing a critical lens that can be used to explain these cross-cultural encounters. The book seeks to identify connections between traditional Chinese fiction and other cultures that create new meanings and add to the significance of reading, teaching, and studying these classical novels and stories in the English-speaking world. Scholars, students, and general readers who are interested in traditional Chinese fiction, translation studies, and comparative and world literature will find this book useful.
1. Introduction. 2. Chapter 1: Hau Kiou Choaan: Encyclopedic Novel, Print Culture, and the Knowledge about China.- 3. Chapter 2: Romantic Fiction, Historical Novels, and the Receptions of Traditional Chinese Fiction from 1800 to 1869.- 4. Chapter 3: Image of China in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Pseudotranslation, Chinese Stories, and Strange Stories from the Lodge of Leisures.- 5. Chapter 4: How Traditional Chinese Fiction Entered World Literature Anthologies.- 6. Chapter 5: Researching Traditional Chinese Fiction in the English-speaking World: Translations and Critiques of Jin Ping Mei. 7. Conclusion.
Junjie Luo is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Gettysburg College, USA. His essays on translation and transnational studies of traditional Chinese literature have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, ISLE, and Translation Quarterly, as well as in the edited volumes Historic Engagements with Occidental Cultures, Religions, Power (2014) and Philosophy as World Literature (2020).
