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Summary:

A groundbreaking account of translation and identity in the Chinese literary tradition before 1850--with important ramifications for todayDebates on the canon, multiculturalism, and world literature often take Eurocentrism as the target of their critique. But literature is a universe with many centers, and one of them is China. The Making of Barbarians offers an account of world literature in which China, as center, produces its own margins. Here Sinologist and comparatist Haun Saussy investigates the meanings of literary translation, adaptation, and appropriation on the boundaries of China long before it came into sustained contact with the West.When scholars talk about comparative literature in Asia, they tend to focus on translation between European languages and Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, as practiced since about 1900. In contrast, Saussy focuses on the period before 1850, when the translation of foreign works into Chinese was rare because Chinese literary tradition overshadowed those around it.The Making of Barbarians looks closely at literary works that were translated into Chinese from foreign languages or resulted from contact with alien peoples. The book explores why translation was such an undervalued practice in premodern China, and how this vast and prestigious culture dealt with those outside it before a new group of foreigners--Europeans--appeared on the horizon.

Table of Contents:

• Cover
• Contents
• Introduction: Intrinsically Extrinsic
• 1. The Nine Relays: Translation in China
• 2. Can the Barbarians Sing?
• 3. The Hanzi wenhua quan: Center, Periphery, and the Shaggy Borderlands
• 4. The Formation of China: Asymmetries in the Writing of History
• 5. Exiles and Emissaries amid Their New Neighbors: The View from the Edge of the World
• Conclusion: Frames, Edges, Escape Codes
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

Author/Creator:

Saussy, Haun, 1960- , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

The making of Barbarians: Chinese literature and multilingual Asia [by Saussy, H.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Making of barbarians [by Saussy, H.] (Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022] — ISBN 0691231974; OCLC Number 1277281642)

Related Series:

Translation/transnation

Subjects:

Chinese literature — 960-1644 — History and criticism

Chinese literature — Qing dynasty, 1644-1912 — History and criticism

Chinese literature — Translations — History and criticism

European literature — Translations into Chinese — History and criticism

China — Relations — Europe

Europe — Relations — China

960-1912

Chinese literature — Translations

European literature

Translations

Relations

Chinese literature

Europe

China

Genres:

Literary criticism

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on: Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter platform, viewed June 13, 2022).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 181 pages) : illustrations (black and white).

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

PL2292.5 .S38 2022eb

ISBNs:

0691231966 (electronic book)
9780691231969 (electronic bk.)

OCLC Numbers:

1296424555