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Homeward Bound Translingualism: (Re)Translating Dai Sijie's Autonarration
Full text linkMigrant authors writing in foreign languages are one of the most tangible effects of the ongoing globalization of contemporary Chinese literature. Dai Sijie, Chinese emigre writer and film-maker, chose the French language to voice his narration of China. Soon he became an example of how the presence of multiple cultures within an individual can result in self-hybridization. His first novel Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise (2000) is based on Dai Sijie's own experience of banishment and tells the story of two youths whose re-education is strongly influenced by Western novels banned in China. But what happens when a literary text born as a translingual and transcultural work is translated back" into its language (and culture) of origin? Is the mediation performed twice or undone? How does this process affect the author's representation? This article will answer such questions through a comparative analysis of the novel and its Chinese versions (published in the P.R.C. and Taiwan), by focusing on the linguistic and cultural (re)translations. The "world literature fever" stresses the centrifugal force pushing literature from China to the West, yet globalization is a circular movement that sometimes implies the homecoming of a "Westproof" Chinese literariness
Smog and the Psyche: Chen Qiufan’s Reading of the Urban Anthropocene
Full text linkThe growing concern for environmental issues has fuelled the rise of climate fiction [cli-fi], a subgenre of science fiction dealing with climate change that has become increasingly popular in the last few decades. In China, significant examples can be found, among others, in Chen Qiufan’s works, which address these problems from different points of view. In his short story “Mai” 霾 [The Smog Society], the author explores the relationship between human beings and nature from an unconventional perspective, overturning the traditional conception of the relationship between the environment and the human mind. This article aims to analyse Chen Qiufan’s short story as an attempt to subvert the causal relationship between pollution and happiness, outlining his interpretation of the urban Anthropocene. The analysis will set out from what Glenn Albrecht has defined as “psychoterratic emotional concepts”, namely earth-related mental health conditions, to explore the author’s view of man-made climate change. In particular, it will explore the depiction of the climatic emergency in the Chinese urban context and its consequences on the protagonist’s psychology and emotions, as well as on urban social life
Mapping Ideology in Language: Han Dong’s Zha gen (Banished!) and Ma Jian’s Rou zhi tu (Beijing Coma)
Full text linkIdeology can play a significant role in shaping literary representations of contemporary China. This study aims to demonstrate that a close reading of the authors’ use of language can reveal the influence of ideology on the literary texts, even when it comes to authors whose positions towards P.R.C. are diametrically opposite. The analysis compares Han Dong’s Zha gen (Banished!) and Ma Jian’s Rou zhi tu (Beijing Coma), implementing Fairclough’s model for Critical Discourse Analysis on vocabulary and grammar. The experiential, relational, and expressive values coded in the texts reveal different tendencies in the authors’ attitudes when representing social reality. Nonetheless, they prove the existence of common ideological features underlying the authors’ literary expression
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