“What is the Contemporary?”-a multi-disciplinary international conference
St Andrews University, School of Modern Language, Institute for Contemporary and Comparative Literature
Xiaoxi Zhang
Novel, Journey, and Stranger: A “Novelized Reading” of Journey to the West
Abstract
Etymologically, the term “novel” originates from the Latin letter “novus”, which means “new”. Hence, the literary genre that bears the name of “novel” is defined as a genre that breaks the traditional conventions that delimit other pre-existing literary genres. In his famous essay “Epic and Novel”, Bakhtin describes novel as the only “living” genre that still capable of developing and incorporating new elements. “Novel” is translated in Chinese as “Xiao Shuo”(小说), a genre that despite bearing certain physical resemblance to “novel”, has a different etymological conceptualization associated to it that is not directly related to something “new”. A lack of cognitive consciousness of the etymology and the discussions associated with the two terms constitutes a major barrier and confusion not only in terms of translation, but also in regard to the reading, the dissemination and the reception of the translated works and the original. In my paper, with consideration of the different “contemporary” conceptualizations of “Xiao Shuo”in different historical stages and Bakhtin’s discussions of novel, I exlpore to what extent the famous 16th century Chinese classic “Xiao Shuo”, still one of the most popular books in contemporary China, Journey to the West, is, and is not a novel, and to what extent a “novelized” reading is productive and problematic in regard to the original, which itself is a “contemporary” retelling of a previous historic event. Then, with brief analysis of four versions of English “translations” of the novel made in the second half of the 20thand early 21stcentury, including two textual translations: one done by W.J.F. Jenner and published in China, the other done by Anthony Yu, published first in Taiwan and then in the US; a revised abridgement of the novel made by Anthony Yu; and a retelling of the book by David Kherdian, I attempt to show how different efforts in translations are made in order for the introduction and the survival of the book in the western world which is regarded as the driving force in the contemporary globalizing process, and how the sense of “contemporary” is transmitted through different translation processes, which in return suggests an alternative interpretation of the “contemporary” in the west.