Western Literature in China and the Translation of a Nation

This book traces the contours of the ways in which Western literature (in both the broad and narrow sense) was introduced and received in China from the 1840s to the present. It is an attempt to navigate and unpack the complex dynamics, or fault zones, of texts (literary and sociopolitical), contexts (Chinese and Western), intertexts (translation and creative writing), dominance (language, culture, ideology) and resistance, and of tension and convergence. It is the story of China's uneasy response to the West, its perilous march toward modernity, and its epic, costly struggle to reclaim the nation's past glory—both real and imagined.