Transforming and Translating the Novel Form: The Examples of Daniel Defoe and Lin Shu

Abstract

Yuanwen Chi’s “Transforming and Translating the Novel Form: The Examples of Daniel Defoe and Lin Shu” begins by situating Defoe’s experiments with prose fiction in the context of early eighteenth-century England standing at the threshold of the Industrial Revolution. His attempts to represent the prevailing ideologies of mercantilism and monarchism had a significant influence on the shaping and development of the embryonic form of the English novel per se. Similarly, in China, more than a century and a half later, Lin Shu’s (林紓, 1852–1924) translations of Western literature would change Chinese approaches to story and narrative. Thus, this [essay] would like to examine Lin Shu and Tseng Zong-Gong’s (曾宗鞏, 1866–1938) translation of Robinson Crusoe (1719) into Chinese as Lu Bin Soon Piao Liu Ji (魯濱孫飄流記) in 1905 and explore how they sought to transform the Chinese traditional narrative into the form of the modern novel via transposing Western literary texts. To be sure, this study of Lin and Tseng’s Chinese translation of Robinson Crusoe is also predicated on an attempt to explore and shed light on the evolution of the novel form in both Western and Eastern cultural contexts. It should be noted that the series of Robinson stories witnessed the plunging into, and involvement of, the Asia–Pacific area (China, Formosa, Japan, the Bay of Tonquin, and the like) in the global geo-political encounters and conflicts since the Age of Discovery. At this historical juncture, the introduction of Western novels to China at the turn of the twentieth century (ca. 1890) was especially significant as it was the product of numerous heated discourses and dialectics on resisting Western imperial invasion and colonial expansions. This multi-faceted and wide-ranging controversy involved the short-lived Wu-Xu Reform Movement (1898), the influence of prevailing social Darwinism, and the urgent need to find a new literary vehicle capable of helping resist the foreign encroachment. Standing alone as a landmark in the history of East–West cultural encounters, Lin Shu’s translations of more than 180 Western literary texts in collaboration with a couple of translators helped pave the way for the polemic establishment of the modern Chinese novel. The aftermath of the transposition had a tremendous and far-reaching impact on social life and thought in turn-of-the-century China and finally helped usher in the May Fourth Movement (五四運動) in 1919.