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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia

The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia

Saussy, Haun

Hardcover

Series: Translation/Transnation, Book 58

Literary CriticismWriting Instruction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0691231974
ISBN13: 9780691231976
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: May 10 2022
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.94 Width: 5.51 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

A groundbreaking account of translation and identity in the Chinese literary tradition before 1850--with important ramifications for today

Debates on the canon, multiculturalism, and world literature often take Eurocentrism as the target of their critique. But literature is a universe with many centers, and one of them is China. The Making of Barbarians offers an account of world literature in which China, as center, produces its own margins. Here Sinologist and comparatist Haun Saussy investigates the meanings of literary translation, adaptation, and appropriation on the boundaries of China long before it came into sustained contact with the West.

When scholars talk about comparative literature in Asia, they tend to focus on translation between European languages and Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, as practiced since about 1900. In contrast, Saussy focuses on the period before 1850, when the translation of foreign works into Chinese was rare because Chinese literary tradition overshadowed those around it.

The Making of Barbarians looks closely at literary works that were translated into Chinese from foreign languages or resulted from contact with alien peoples. The book explores why translation was such an undervalued practice in premodern China, and how this vast and prestigious culture dealt with those outside it before a new group of foreigners--Europeans--appeared on the horizon.

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