Discrepancies Between Zhang Tianyi and Dickens
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Zhang Tianyi’s Selective Acceptance of Charles Dickens Chunxu Ge School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2019 1 Abstract This research is a comparative study on the works of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Zhang Tianyi 張天翼 (1906-1985). The former was one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era; the latter, a Left-wing writer in Republican China. The study analyses five short stories from Zhang’s corpus and compares his works with ten novles of Dickens. The study argues that Dickens is one among other writers that have parallels with Zhang, through the exploration of several aspects of their works. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dickens’s novels were introduced to China by Lin Shu. Since then, they have influenced a great number of Chinese scholars and writers. First, considering the contents of Zhang’s short stories, I roughly categorise them into five modes, respectively focusing on bureaucrats, villains, social climbers, revolutionary propa-ganda and wartime intellectuals. One short story of each type is analysed in detail. Second, this study explores both the similarities and the discrepancies between Zhang and Dickens’s inner worlds and the projections of those worlds within their texts. I find that the two authors have much in common in their character portrayals, humour, language, children’s perspectives and focus on social issues, whereas they differ considerably in what they hoped to achieve with their works, partly due to their different social settings, and this in turn gives their works very different qualities. Where Dickens believed in the goodness of human nature and hoped for gradual reform, Zhang Tianyi was a proponent of radical change and revolution. This study expands the scope of the existing research on Zhang Tianyi, clarifies and establishes important factors in Zhang’s literary development, and explores how Zhang imitated Dickens’s artistic techniques and then creatively transformed them. Moreover, this study provides new perspectives and deepens existing studies. This investigation will thereby enable others to better understand Zhang’s literary works, and will simultaneously help map Dickens’s influence outside Britain. 2 Acknowledgements I owe a debt of gratitude to my supervisor Dr Christopher Rosenmeier for his advice over the years. I would like to thank my mother who paid my tuition fees and large part of living expenses. This project would not have been possible without her continued support. In addition, my father gave me lots of help and advice. I would also like to thank CAHSS for additional financial support in the last period of this research. 3 Contents Chapter I: Background ............................................................................................................................ 5 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Literature Review .............................................................................................................................. 10 Research Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 27 Dickens in Republican China ............................................................................................................ 31 Reasons for Zhang Tianyi Adopting Dickens ................................................................................... 34 Chapter II: The Similarities between Dickens and Zhang Tianyi ......................................................... 38 Section I: “Character Comes First” ................................................................................................... 39 Section II: Representation of Social Classes ..................................................................................... 46 Section III: Character Description Skills .......................................................................................... 52 Section IV: Humour and Satire ......................................................................................................... 61 Section V: Children’s Perspectives ................................................................................................... 79 Section VI: Language ....................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter III: Discrepancies between Zhang Tianyi and Dickens ......................................................... 104 Section I: Criticism of the Social System ....................................................................................... 105 Section II: Attitudes towards Social Revolution, Zhang Tianyi, Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo ........................................................................................................................................................ 113 Section III: Opinions on Artistry .................................................................................................... 125 Section IV: Pessimism and Optimism ............................................................................................ 129 Chapter IV: Analyses of Five Works of Zhang Tianyi ....................................................................... 141 Section I: “Moving On” .................................................................................................................. 143 Section II: “Cheng Yeheng” ........................................................................................................... 154 Section III: “Fatalism and Fortune-telling” .................................................................................... 165 Section IV: “Sons and Daughters” .................................................................................................. 176 Section V: “New Life” .................................................................................................................... 188 Conclusion: Selectivity, Subjectivity and Initiative of Republican Chinese Writers in Accepting Western Literature .............................................................................................................................. 196 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 200 4 Chapter I: Background Introduction During the New Culture Movement (1917-1927), the introduction of foreign literature greatly influenced Chinese literature. As Leo Ou-Fan Lee 李歐梵 argues: “... foreign literature was used to bolster the new Chinese writer’s own image and lifestyle. With their own inflated egos and mania for hero-worship, these leading men of letters established a fetish of personal identification……To be ‘a la Mode’ on the literary scene required that a literary man display not only his new poem or story but also his pantheon of foreign masters: Byron, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, Romain Rolland, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Hugo and Rousseau were among the favourites on almost everyone’s list.”1 Charles Dickens was famous in the nineteenth century and his fame has not waned; in fact, his work remains known throughout the world. His works describe the lives of the lower classes of society and thus reveal the nuanced reality of the British Victorian era. In terms of technique, Dickens is famous for his wit and humour, linguistic creativity, detailed psychological enquiry and the combination of fantasy and realism. Dickens’s novels were first introduced to China at the beginning of the twentieth century by Lin Shu 林紓(1852-1924), the prodigious late Qing translator who gained an epithet as the “King of translation” (yijie zhi wang 譯界之王). According to Lee, “There was hardly any May Fourth writer who did not first come into contact with Western literature through Lin’s translations.” 2 In “Writing at Chunjuezhai” (Chunjuezhai zhushuji 春覺齋著述記), Lin Shu states that he “had acquired the ability 1 Leo Ou-Fan Lee, “Literary Trends I: The Quest for Modernity, 1895–1927” in John K. Fairbank and Denis C. Twitchett eds. The Cambridge History of China, vol.12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 490-491. 2 Ibid., 490. 5 to differentiate the nuances of one novel from another in the same way he grew accustomed to listening to the footsteps of his family members.” 3 He translated Dickens’s David Copperfield, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, and Nicholas Nickleby into traditional Chinese prose, entitling them Kuairou yusheng ji 塊肉餘生記 (1908), Xiaonü nai’er zhuan 孝女耐爾傳