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China and Inner Asia
Organized Panel Session
Liang Qichao considered popular fiction as always exerting its influence on the masses, though mostly against shared moral values and traditionally condemned for propagating violence and sex (huidao huiyin 誨盜誨淫). Thus, for him “to transform people of a country, the only way was to transform the country’s fiction” and mastering foreign literary history was a way to conduct such transformation.
In 1872, 30 years earlier than Liang’s theories, Shenbao started publishing Western literature, reaching its climax only after 1907. Understanding the problematic reception of foreign and innovative contents by traditional readership, editors applied a clever adaptation strategy: normally translations were not explicitly stated, original authors and translators were omitted and narrative expedients were frequently used to gain validation, for instance faking the discovery of ancient manuscripts. Besides, additional customization techniques reveal a precise intent of assigning foreign literature with a new metaphoric message, not conveyed by the original, in order to enrich it with a social and utilitarian role strictly linked to local issues. This is the case of The Merchant of Venice, transposed into a duanpian xiaoshuo that became a metaphor to condemn the sacrifice of “pounds of flesh and blood of our citizens” in the interest of Western powers.
Renata Vinci
Roma Tre University, Italy