Chronology Entry
Year
1909
Text
Yu wai xiao shuo ji. Zhou Zuoren yi. [ID D12489].
Earliest translation of Oscar Wilde was The happy prince by Zhou Zuoren in classical Chinese. In his short introduction, Zhou argues that the key point of Wilde's aestheticism is to 'transform life into an art. He himself practiced it by wearing eccentric clothes of an extraordinary shape and walking down in the street with a sunflower in hand'. According to Zhou, Wilde was an artist with a will to transcend ordinary life and elevate himself to the higher level of the kingdom of art.
Zhou Zuoren's efforts to promote Western humanist writing were unsuccessful at that time. A re-issue of these translations in 1921 was soon out of print, this time presumably because classical Chinese was now superseded by the vernacular.
Earliest translation of Oscar Wilde was The happy prince by Zhou Zuoren in classical Chinese. In his short introduction, Zhou argues that the key point of Wilde's aestheticism is to 'transform life into an art. He himself practiced it by wearing eccentric clothes of an extraordinary shape and walking down in the street with a sunflower in hand'. According to Zhou, Wilde was an artist with a will to transcend ordinary life and elevate himself to the higher level of the kingdom of art.
Zhou Zuoren's efforts to promote Western humanist writing were unsuccessful at that time. A re-issue of these translations in 1921 was soon out of print, this time presumably because classical Chinese was now superseded by the vernacular.
Mentioned People (2)
Wilde, Oscar
(Dublin 1854-1900 Paris) : Irischer Schriftsteller, Dramatiker, Dichter
Zhou, Zuoren
(Shaoxing, Zhejiang 1885-1967 Beijing) : Schriftsteller, Übersetzer
Subjects
Literature : Occident : Ireland
/
Translator
Documents (2)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1972-1973 | Dougall, Bonny S. Fictional authors, imagery audiences : "The importance of being earnest" in China. = McDougall, Bonnie S. The importance of being earnest in China : early Chinese attitudes towards Oscar Wilde. In : Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, vol. 9 (1972/73). | Publication / WilO7 |
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| 2 | 1997 | Zhou, Xiaoyi. Oscar Wilde : an image of artistic self-fashioning in modern China, 1909-1949. In : Images of Westerners in Chinese and Japanese literature : proceedings of the XVth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association‚ Literature as cultural memory, Leiden 1997. Ed. by Hua Meng, Sukehiro Hirakawa. (Amsterdam : Rodopi, 2000). | Publication / WilO4 |
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