When the Chinese-language The Poison of Polygamy was translated into English,some critics identified the work as picaresque.Skeptical of this conclusion,the author of this paper broadens the field of inquiry to sugges...When the Chinese-language The Poison of Polygamy was translated into English,some critics identified the work as picaresque.Skeptical of this conclusion,the author of this paper broadens the field of inquiry to suggest classification in an emigrant sensational genre.Briefly,the first two plots of the multi-strand work unfold the adventures of Chinese emigrants travelling by sea and land to Melbourne’s Gold Mountain.Interestingly,we are also afforded a glimpse of emigrant miners’cooperation regardless of race and colour when a mine disaster occurs.The work provides sharp recognition of migrants’dilemmas,such as marriage,before tackling the bigamy issue,the gender war,the fallen lifestyle of the female protagonist and so on.As the work unfolds,further shocking tales of murders and indulgence are revealed.Unlike the picareque’s episodic style,the translated Poison of Polygamy is coherent,realistic,serious and critical,and completely lacking in both sarcasm and playfulness.To investigate the appropriateness of assigning the work to the picaresque genre,the paper compares briefly with representative Spanish picaresque works such as Lazarillo and Gusman and English canonical Moll Flanders,watching carefully for commonalities.However,The Poison of Polygamy would seem to resonate more with Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret,a sensational fiction which shocked the English world in the 1860s.The contexts of both novels are close,mid-Victorian and Edwardian,where the latter is a continuation of the Victorians.The author is further enlightened by research results of literary translators who advocate that a text,once translated into a target language,becomes a canon of that culture and is cherished as such by its readers-as in the case of Shakespeare being revered as a German poet when read in translation.From this experiment the paper deems that cross-lingual comparative literature is not only possible but significant and resourceful.展开更多
Edited in Hong Kong and published in English,The China Review has always taken seriously its mission to serveas a bridge between Anglophone and Sinophone
This paper sets out to examine the ＂exhausted narrative＂ in aesthetic and poetic experience, revealing the affect and effect of Tsai Ming-Liang＇s film-making. He is notable for his obsession with ruins, defunct con...This paper sets out to examine the ＂exhausted narrative＂ in aesthetic and poetic experience, revealing the affect and effect of Tsai Ming-Liang＇s film-making. He is notable for his obsession with ruins, defunct construction sites, abandoned buildings, and film itself as a modern ruin. These sites are a reminder of the alienated subjects within its historical context, a fragmented narrative, and an uncertain or failed future to come, just like the ruin--a chapter of a halted story. Tsai＇s films are not only full of ruinous images and bodies, but even the fragmented narratives are ruinous, turning in elliptical circles, aiming toward their morbid ending until their total exhaustion. This cinematic ouroboros ophis will be discussed in two aspects： first, as an aesthetic practice, and second, as the parallelism between the on- and off-screen reality of the mode of production and reception in the cinematic experience. The term ＂exhausted narratives＂ refers to the processes of writing meta-fiction, as that of ＂re-orchestrating＂ and ＂re-editing＂ the past with respect to the present, and to inscribing Tsai＇s own narrative universe.展开更多
文摘When the Chinese-language The Poison of Polygamy was translated into English,some critics identified the work as picaresque.Skeptical of this conclusion,the author of this paper broadens the field of inquiry to suggest classification in an emigrant sensational genre.Briefly,the first two plots of the multi-strand work unfold the adventures of Chinese emigrants travelling by sea and land to Melbourne’s Gold Mountain.Interestingly,we are also afforded a glimpse of emigrant miners’cooperation regardless of race and colour when a mine disaster occurs.The work provides sharp recognition of migrants’dilemmas,such as marriage,before tackling the bigamy issue,the gender war,the fallen lifestyle of the female protagonist and so on.As the work unfolds,further shocking tales of murders and indulgence are revealed.Unlike the picareque’s episodic style,the translated Poison of Polygamy is coherent,realistic,serious and critical,and completely lacking in both sarcasm and playfulness.To investigate the appropriateness of assigning the work to the picaresque genre,the paper compares briefly with representative Spanish picaresque works such as Lazarillo and Gusman and English canonical Moll Flanders,watching carefully for commonalities.However,The Poison of Polygamy would seem to resonate more with Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret,a sensational fiction which shocked the English world in the 1860s.The contexts of both novels are close,mid-Victorian and Edwardian,where the latter is a continuation of the Victorians.The author is further enlightened by research results of literary translators who advocate that a text,once translated into a target language,becomes a canon of that culture and is cherished as such by its readers-as in the case of Shakespeare being revered as a German poet when read in translation.From this experiment the paper deems that cross-lingual comparative literature is not only possible but significant and resourceful.
文摘Edited in Hong Kong and published in English,The China Review has always taken seriously its mission to serveas a bridge between Anglophone and Sinophone
文摘This paper sets out to examine the ＂exhausted narrative＂ in aesthetic and poetic experience, revealing the affect and effect of Tsai Ming-Liang＇s film-making. He is notable for his obsession with ruins, defunct construction sites, abandoned buildings, and film itself as a modern ruin. These sites are a reminder of the alienated subjects within its historical context, a fragmented narrative, and an uncertain or failed future to come, just like the ruin--a chapter of a halted story. Tsai＇s films are not only full of ruinous images and bodies, but even the fragmented narratives are ruinous, turning in elliptical circles, aiming toward their morbid ending until their total exhaustion. This cinematic ouroboros ophis will be discussed in two aspects： first, as an aesthetic practice, and second, as the parallelism between the on- and off-screen reality of the mode of production and reception in the cinematic experience. The term ＂exhausted narratives＂ refers to the processes of writing meta-fiction, as that of ＂re-orchestrating＂ and ＂re-editing＂ the past with respect to the present, and to inscribing Tsai＇s own narrative universe.
