Abstract:
This thesis explores the reception of Katherine Mansfield's fiction in China, which occurred in two distinct phases: the 1920s and 1930s, when interest in her work coincided with the emergence of modern Chinese literature, and the 1980s, when her work was re-discovered after a period of four decades. The thesis is in three parts. Part One, of two chapters, explores the critical reception of her work in the earlier and later phases. Part Two, in three chapters, focuses specifically on the translation of Mansfield's work. The first chapter provides a comprehensive translation history, and studies the overall pattern of translations during the two phases. The second and third chapters examine the quality of translations in each phase, comparing different versions of particular stories in order to assess their strengths and weaknesses, as well as to illuminate aspects of the original stories. Part Three, consisting of six chapters, turns to Chinese fiction writers influenced by Mansfield, comparing the work of six authors with hers. Five of these authors (the male writers Xu Zhimo and Xiao Qian, and the female writers Ling Shuhua, Lin Huiyin, and Bing Xin) belong to the earlier period, and one (the woman writer Feng Zongpu) belongs to the 1980s. This section of the thesis begins with a chapter that explores problematic issues in the study of literary influence, and defines the particular approach adopted in this thesis. The Conclusion suggests that there is a similarity between Mansfield's aesthetic interests and sensibility, and values deeply rooted in Chinese history and cultural traditions. The Appendices to the thesis comprise: the first comprehensive bibliography of translations and writings in Chinese about Mansfield; a chronology of all Mansfield items in the 1920s and 1930s, against a background of key literary events in China, 1918 - 1937; and translations into English, for the first time, of six representative articles (and excerpts) about Mansfield.