Xiyouji : the cross-cultural journey

Abstract

My dissertation examines the translation within Xiyouji, the Chinese novel written in the sixteenth century, as well as its cross-cultural journey through translation and adaptation into the English world. As one of the most popular pre-modern Chinese novels appreciated on a global scale, Xiyouji embodies translation and cultural reconciliation in its texts, when its reception and transformation in the English-speaking culture unfold a new round of cultural negotiation through the act of translation. I have adopted various approaches in the different chapters, with methodologies including close readings of the original novel, its various English translations, and visual and textual adaptations of Xiyouji, as well as theoretical analyses on concepts including translation, adaptation, the translator’s invisibility, and the xiaoshuo/novel alignment, with particular focus on their relations with specific socio-historical contexts, constructing a study that crosses the borders of literary studies, translation and adaptation studies. Chapter Two focuses on the disappearance of the translator in the creation of Xiyouji, and the process in which the translator’s invisibility transforms into the sublation of the translator function in a cross-cultural context. Chapter Three identifies the historical significance of the xiaoshuo/novel alignment, and analyzes Arthur Waley’s Monkey by referring to Ian Watt’s definition of novel, revealing how Waley rewrote Xiyouji into an elegantly structured English novel, effectively created the Chinese novel in the English world. Chapter Four turns to Anthony Yu’s complete English translation, The Journey to the West, and analyzes the translator’s distinctive methods in bringing the textual and formal cultural elements in Xiyouji into the English world, its image in the new linguistic and cultural environment guaranteeing a reading closely guided by the translator function. Chapter Five deals with further transformation of Xiyouji in the cross-cultural contexts, bringing forward transcultural adaptations in the forms of stage plays, television dramas, and etc. By crossing into other forms of presentation, Xiyouji obtains new interpretations that are mingled with the receptive culture, witnessing cultural hybrids that may lead to new levels of literary creation.