Translation of Narrative Voice and Reproduction of a Simulated Storytelling Mode

Chinese vernacular fiction is characterized by a simulated storytelling mode through which the narrator manipulates narration and facilitates interaction with the reader. There is little research on the representation of this distinctive Chinese narrative mode across languages and cultures. Recently scholars in translation studies have begun to focus on how different types and levels of voice are represented in translated texts. The present article investigates how the overt voice of the simulated storyteller characterizing the Chinese vernacular narrative style is represented in three complete English translations of a Chinese classic entitled Shuihu Zhuan. The article includes a comparative study of how the storyteller-narrator manifests his narrative voice through storytelling formulae and rhetorical narratorial questions and more importantly, on how the storyteller-narrator’s voice has been rendered by different translators. Besides, by relating the reproduction of narrative voice to translatorship, it shows that the professional role and status of each translator influence their strategy-making as to whether, and to what extent, the narrative voice of the source text should be reconstructed.

Vernacular “Fiction” and Celestial Script: A Daoist Manual for the Use of Water Margin

This article maps out a sphere of ritual practice that recognizably serves as a framework for the famous Ming dynasty (1368–1644) vernacular narrative Water Margin (水滸傳 Shuihu zhuan). By establishing a set of primary referents that are ritual in nature, I question the habit of applying the modern category of “literary fiction” in a universalizing, secular way, marginalizing or metaphorizing religious elements. I argue that literary analysis can only be fruitful if it is done within the parameters of ritual. Although I tie the story’s ritual framework to specific Daoist procedures for imprisoning demonic spirits throughout the article, my initial focus is on a genre of revelatory writing known as “celestial script” (天書 tianshu). This type of script is given much attention at important moments in the story and it is simultaneously known from Daoist ritual texts. I show a firm link between Water Margin and the uses of “celestial script” by presenting a nineteenth century Daoist ordination manual that contains “celestial script” for each of Water Margin’s 108 heroic protagonists.

Masculinizing Jianghu Spaces in the Past and Present: Homosociality, Nationalism and Chineseness

Jianghu (rivers and lakes) refers to the imagined spatial arena in Chinese literature and culture that is parallel to, or sometimes in a tangential relationship with, mainstream society. Inhabited by merchants, craftsmen, beggars and vagabonds, and later bandits, outlaws and gangsters, the jianghu space constitutes an interesting “field” (to borrow Pierre Bourdieu’s term) that produces alternative subjectivities in traditional Chinese culture. In most representations, jianghu is primarily a homosocial world of men, which honors masculine moral codes. By tracing changes of jianghu spaces over time, this paper attempts to set the spatial politics of masculinity in Chinese culture in a historical context. It unravels its dynamic interrelations with the tropes of class and nation, from the hosting of outlaws in the traditional masterpiece Shuihu zhuan (Water margin) to the resurgence of jianghu images and imaginaries as a symbol of Chineseness in post-socialist film and television. It argues that the widely referenced relationship between civil (wen) and martial (wu ) values in imperial China describes only gentry-class masculinities. By contrast, jianghu spaces lie at the margins of society and so invite an alternative conceptualization of lower-class masculinities. In contemporary China, jianghu has come to symbolize a new mode of Chinese masculinity in the global age. It can refer not only to fictional spaces in the martial arts genre, but also to social spaces that cement the “Chinese-style” relationships and networks needed for success in the reform market.