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The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia

Online ISBN:
9780691231969
Print ISBN:
9780691231976
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia

Haun Saussy
Haun Saussy
University of Chicago
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Published online:
18 May 2023
Published in print:
10 May 2022
Online ISBN:
9780691231969
Print ISBN:
9780691231976
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

Debates 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 book offers an account of world literature in which China, as center, produces its own margins. The book 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, the book 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 book looks closely at literary works that were translated into Chinese from foreign languages or resulted from contact with alien peoples. It 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.

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