Portraits of Du Fu in English translations

Abstract

Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770) is China’s most worshipped poet. He is well known and thoroughly studied in Chinese, with his images deeply rooted in the mind of Chinese people. In the English world, though the scholarship dedicated on Du Fu does not justifiably constitute the amount of output a monumental wordsmith deserves, he has been partially translated various times by different scholars or poets before the complete English translation is available. This thesis aims to depict the reception of Du Fu in the Chinese and English literary traditions to demonstrate how such a towering literary figure is presented in the source and target cultures.

Using the representation of the poet in Chinese anthologies and the different foci of Du Fu studies from the Tang (618-907) to Qing period (1636-1912) as an opening case study, it is found that there are five typical portraits of Du Fu in the Chinese culture, namely the poet-historian, the autobiographical poet, the erudite poet, the poet-sage and the great synthesizer. The study then progresses to the history of Du Fu reception in the Western world. After a chronological survey of the nature and history of poetry translation, a handful of influential English translations of Du Fu and their rendering strategies are examined to show a clearer picture of Du Fu as he is presented to the Western readership. A comparison is finally drawn to evaluate how the qualities that bring fame to Du Fu are transferred to the English readership.