Ideological and poetological tensions : inventing modern Chinese poetry through British Romanticism, 1917-1933

Abstract

This study examines the rewriting of British Romanticism by prominent Chinese poets in the early republican era as part of their effort to construct or invent modern Chinese poetry, i.e. William Blake (1757-1827) by Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) by Wu Mi (1894-1978), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) by Guo Moruo (1892-1978), and John Keats (1795-1821) by Wen Yiduo (1899-1946). It reveals the ideological and poetological tensions behind the appropriation of British Romanticism as well as the borrowings from British Romanticism as shown in the poetics and poetry of major modern Chinese poets. In doing so, it sheds light on the transformation of Western aesthetic modernity relocated to the Chinese context and problematizes the existing debate on the modernity of Chinese poetry, which tends to overlook the Western origin of modernity and to generalize foreign poetic influence. Concurrently, this study aspires to push back the boundaries of translation studies by scrutinizing not only the translation of British Romantic poetry but also its imitation and assimilation, two types of rewriting absent from André Lefevere’s theory but indicative of the British Romantic poetics and poetry crystallized into the traditions of modern Chinese poetry.