“Faulkner's short stories and novels in China” (Publication, 1990)
Year
1990
Text
Tao, Jie. Faulkner's short stories and novels in China. In : Faulkner and the short story. Ed. by Evans Harrington and Ann J. Abadie. (Jackson : University of Mississippi Press, 1992). (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1990). (Faul5)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Tao, Jie
(um 1990) : Professor of English, School of Foreign Studies, Director of the Women's Studies Center, Beijing University
Mentioned People (1)
Faulkner, William
(New Albany, Miss. 1897-1962 Byhalia, Miss.) : Schriftsteller, Nobelpreisträger
.
.
Subjects
Literature : Occident : United States of America
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (16)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1932-2000 |
William Faulkner and China : general. 2011 Tao, Jie. Review and analysis of William Faulkner studies in China over the past 60 years [ID D30363]. Abstract. For almost half a century, scholars, editors, translators, and university professors did not pay much attention to William Faulkner, the world-famous American novelist. Faulkner was first introduced to Chinese readers by Xian dai in the1930s, which, however, did not stir up much interest. In 1950, when Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature, some Chinese scholars became interested . Unfortunately, political campaigns, especially the Cultural Revolution, interrupted further study of Faulkner. The neglect of Faulkner in the early years after the founding of the People's Republic of China was no surprise as translations and discussions of the former Soviet Union and East-European literature dominated the field of foreign literature studies. It was not until the late 1970s that a new wave of Faulkner scholarship was initiated. The decade of 1979-1989 witnessed Faulkner's growing popularity among Chinese readers, writers as well as scholars. Young writers like Zhao Mei, Mo Yan and Zhang Kangkang all acknowledged his influence. Focusing on The Sound and the Fury and A Rose for Emily, literary critics mainly discussed the characters and themes of his novels, and his use of stream of consciousness and other modernist techniques. The study of Faulkner in China reached its height during the1990s, accompanied by large-scale translation and readings of Faulkner's novels and Faulkner studies in the West. Critical studies on Faulkner in this period focused on introducing his life and art, but with increasing comprehensiveness and sophistication. Remarkably, there is a lasting interest in Faulkner's reflections on women and race among literary critics at home and abroad. An examination of the essays published in China in the 1990s demonstrates that Chinese scholars have engaged in a dialogue with their Western counterparts sharing in-depth views on research topics and methods. Faulkner studies in China have made rapid progress since the beginning of the new century, featured by the involvement of an increasing number of young scholars, a broadening interest in Faulkner's works besides The Sound and the Fury and A Rose for Emily, a diversification of research approaches, and a gradual increase in academic papers and books in terms of comparative criticism. On the whole, Faulkner studies began rather late in China but have developed fast since the late 1970s. Chinese scholars of Faulkner have made great achievements in spite of some overlapping and repetitive discussions around such topics as race, gender, the fictional kingdom, and the function of time. Further studies on Faulkner's later works and his use of realist techniques are therefore recommended . 1983 Tao Jie : The teahouse in Chinese villages and towns, like the courthouse square and village store in Faulkner's stories, is the center of activity where news and gossip of the living, and legends and tales of the past are swapped, passed around, and handed down in the lively oral tradition. A comparison between Faulkner's humor and that of the Chinese writers shows that they have a lot in common. Much of Faulkner's humor is in the oral tradition, based on some kind of trickery. It is intended to reveal flaws in human nature. This kind of humor can be found in Chinese folklore. Another similarity between Faulkner and some Chinese writers is that their humor grows out of a deep understanding of the locale where they were born and have lived most of their lives. The most important aspect of Faulkner's humor and that of the Chinese writers lies in that they suggest more than they ever say. 1992 Tao Jie : I believe Faulkner's appeals to many Chinese readers just because they see themselves in the fate of his characters and because Faulkner depicts so well the emotions and feelings they too share but are unable to articulate. 1982 H.R. Stoneback : Human passions, joy, love, strong characters are alien to Faulkner, as are images of fighters for the rights and dignity of man. His world is a world of dying and dissolution. I am told that such representative early Soviet views of Faulkner were shared by the Chinese into the 1960s. Because China is still in large part a rural country that Faulkner will soon have a vast audience there, that particularly because China is a rural country on the brink of modernization Faulkner will be 'very necessary' and extremely popular over the coming decades. 2007 Feng Yi : In his novels, Faulkner employs many modern avant-garde writing techniques, including the stream of consciousness, the interior monologue, juxtaposition, and multiperspective techniques, expatiatory sentences in which he often uses obscure words and suspends punctuation and paragraphing, and ambiguous story lines, all of which have become major objects of Chinese critical analysis. Chinese critics utilize different perspectives to explore Faulkner's use of language and narrative. Some critics employ Freudian psychology to analyze his stream of consciousness writing ; some employ aesthetics and modern painting theory to demonstrate the similarities between his artistic language and modern art ; some probe into the deep motivations of his unique narrative style by conducting research investigating his personal life experiences ; and some comment on his extremely modern manipulations of time, space, and the like. After Faulkner's narrative style and art of language, it is his female characters that have captured the hearts of Chinese critics. Most Chinese critics employ feminist theory to analyze the female characters in the Yoknapatawpha novels, of whom Emily in A rose for Emily and Caddy in The sound and the fury are the most heavily discussed and studied characters in all Faulkner's novels. Most Chinese critics take the view that Faulkner demonstrates deep concern and sympathy for Southern women, whom he successfully depicts as oppressed and persecuted by Puritanism. Some critics, still argue that in Yoknapatawpha female characters are overwhelmed by male characters. Chinese scholars have drawn comparisons between Faulkner and various British and American authors, including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Ernest Hemingway, and Toni Morrison, and also viewed his writings in the context of those of modern and contemporary Chinese authors, including Lu Xun, Ba Jin, Shen Congwen, Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Zhang Wei. |
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| 2 | 1932 |
Shi, Zhecun. [Editor's notes]. [ID D 30389]. Shi Zhecun decided to put out special issues to introduce modern literature of different countries and the first issue was to be one on American literature. He explained that he began with the United States, "a country with the shortest history in the world", simply because "gone are the days when the United States was fettered with the British tradition. The modern United States is setting up an example that an independent national literature may still be developed in the twentieth century. What encouragement such an example will offer to our new literature that has severed all its ties with past conventions and is developing independently and creatively". |
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| 3 | 1934 |
Shi, Zhecun. Meiguo xiao shuo zhi cheng zhang [ID D30390]. Zhao show that William Faulkner was a stylist and a rising star. He applaudes Faulkner as a truly native American writer, especially in the use of language : "The dialogues in Black English are the most beautiful part of each of his novels. His narrative technique of combining psychological description with dialogues is more worth noting than that of Sherwood Anderson or Ernest Hemingway. He has broken away from the restrictions of English literature and avoided Joyce's defect of incomprehensibility. As American society is moving towards disintegration, decline, defeat, and chaos, Faulkner has taken the cruelties and miseries of modern society as the subject matter and death as the center of his stories. Faulkner's bitterness, his distress at being unable to find a general solution to all the tragedies, brutalities, and savagery reflects the despair of the modern man who is trying desperately to survive in this crazy world of the 1930s". |
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| 4 | 1934 |
Ling, Changyan. Fukena : yi ge xin zuo feng de chang shi zhe [ID D30392]. "Faulkner is a typical writer of modern life, he writes about crimes, brutalities, and primitive sexuality, his outlook on life is wholly pessimistic, Faulkner's writings are actually well-planned beneath the surface of total chaos." Ling suggests that Faulkner tried to win popularity by writing about "immoral matter and unpleasant happenings" and through the use of new techniques so as to cater to the reader's need for sensation and strangeness. "Faulkner is not a profound thinker, Faulkner has become popular simply because the present time is as unhealthy as the author himself". He concludes that Faulkner was not as good as Sherwood Anderson or Sinclair Lewis. "Their work force people to think against their will, while all that Faulkner gives to the reader is only sensation, an unusual kind of sensual excitement." |
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| 5 | 1936 |
Zhao, Jiabi. Xin chuan tong [ID D29670]. [Kapitel über William Faulkner]. Zhao compared Faulkner with writers of primitivism but remarked that he did not write about savages but about "the brutalities of the white people in a corrupted civilized society". He quoted articles by Waldman, Munson and Hicks to confirm that Faulkner was a pessimist and a writer of potential. Zhao divided Faulkner's novels into three groups : war novels, experimental fiction of psychoanalysis, and naturalistic depiction of brutalities in society. He believed that The sound and the fury and As I lay dying were not successful because Faulkner "followed Joyce's way of writing", that Sanctuary and, to some extent, Light in august caught the reader's need for sensation and sensual excitement. Zhao criticized Faulkner for his determinism and for offering heredity as the cause of social cruelties. The most important point is his remark that "both Sanctuary and Light in august have assured us that Faulkner is a more promising writer than Ernest Hemingway. |
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| 6 | 1958 |
[Faulkner, William. Victory. Zhao Luorui yi : Death drag. Huang Xingxi yi]. [ID D30394]. In the introductory notes, Li Wenjun states, "Faulkner's novels are mainly descriptions of the declining aristocrats in the American South. But he also writes with great sympathy about people whose lives were destroyed by war. The two stories in this issue reveal to us Faulkner's hatred of war and deep sympathy for the victims of war. His indignation and protest against the cruelties of imperialist warfare have become more bitter and more explicit in A fable, his latest novel." |
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| 7 | 1964 |
Yuan, Kejia. Ying mei yi shi liu xiao shuo ping shu [ID D30387]. Tao Jie : The essay makes a careful study of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying by William Faulkner, Ulysses by James Joyce and To the lighthouse and The waves by Virginia Woolf. In the concluding section, Yuan Kejia labels the stream-of-consciousness fiction as "a literary product of the declining bourgeoisie in the West", and mentions As I lay dying and its interior monologues as a good example of "the psychological reflection of the declinging bourgeoisie that is divorced from reality and therefore afraid of confronting it". He severely criticizes stream-of-consciousness novelists for writing about "dreams, sex, madness, and nonconsciousness" which "are but expressions of the perverted psychology and low taste of a decadent class" and which have "power to corrupt the people's minds and their militant will." Despite the political jargon, Yuan makes a correct and objective interpretation of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying. Some of his arguments – such as the stream of consciousness as the best technique to depict the spiritual decadence of the Compsons ; the decline of the Compsons as represented by Benjy's idiocy, Quentin's suicide, and Jason's greed ; the complexity of psychological reaction to experience as reflected in the different characters in As I lay dying ; Addie's distress about the disjunction between words and reality and Anse's belief in abstraction – are still valid twenty-five years later. Although the author criticizes Faulkner for making Dilsey "more slavish than rebellious" and remarks that "it is incredible that this old woman should be so hardworking and so devoted to the white masters that have been exploiting her for years, he stresses the fact that "Faulkner took part in the 1951 campaign to protect a black man called Willie McGee and denounced the racists in the South in 1955 and opposed segregation in American schools", to show that Faulkner was not so "reactionary" as James Jyce or so "conservative" as Virginia Woolf. Jin Di : Yuan criticized Ulysses by James Joyce for its 'nihilist, philistine and pornographic tendencies', and denied its artistic values as well. |
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| 8 | 1979 |
[Faulkner, William]. Fukena duan pian xiao shuo san pian [ID D30398]. Tao Jie : In the introductory notes Faulkner was called "a spokesman of the American South", and praised for his "experimentation with point of view and the dislocation of the time sequence". Zhao Jiabi's argument that Faulkner was a pessimist was refuted by quotations from hid Nobel prize acceptance speech to prove that "although Faulkner wrote largely about the ugliness of life and the crimes in society, he was not a pessimist but one who had firm belief in mankind". |
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| 9 | 1980 |
Fukena ping lun ji. Li Wenjun bian xuan [ID D30399]. In the preface William Faulkner was assessed by Li Wenjun as "one of the most important novelists of modern America ; an undeniably major writer of the school of Southern literature ; the writer most discussed and most carefully examined in the United States ; one of the most distinguished modernist writers since James Joyce". |
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| 10 | 1980-1981 | Two Fulbright programs at Beijing University to train English teachers from colleges and universities in China. The Fulbright scholars taught survey courses on American history, culture, and literature, and special courses on individual American writers, including Faulkner. |
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| 11 | 1980-1985 |
Wai guo xian dai pai zuo pin xuan [ID D16726]. (Vol. 2, 1981). In the introduction Li Wenjun speaks highly of the Yoknapatawpha saga as "reflection of Southern society in the past 200 years", compares the philosophical depth and emotional appeal of Faulkner's novels to that of the Bible, the Greek tragedies, and Shakespeare's tragedies, enumerates Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness, multiple narration, inverted order, detention, and symbolism, and makes a detailed analysis of the theme and technique of The sound and the fury. |
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| 12 | 1984 |
[Faulkner, William]. Xuan hua yu sao dong. Li Wenjun yi. [ID D29247]. Li Wenjun remarks in the preface that "William Faulkner was not merely a provincial writer of local color, as he deals with almost all the major issues that confront sensitive intellectuals in the West". In his discussion of the story itself, Li Wenjun warmly applaudes the characterization of Dilsey : "Inexhaustible compassion flows out of her. She protects the weak in defiance of her master's hostility and the prejudice of conventional ideas. She is the only bright spot in the gloomy picture. Her kitchen is the only place that offers warmth in the ice-cold tomblike house. Dilsey is the pillar in the entire tottering world. Her loyalty, endurance, perseverance, and compassion form a striking contrast with the three morbid narrators before her. Though Dilsey, the author acclaims the spiritual beauty of simple and honest people." Li Wenjun also makes the point that Faulkner's repeated use of stream of consciousness is not just out of his belief that "fragments of experience are truer to reality" but is totally subjected to the need of characterization, as "the three narrators are all mentally unbalanced and incapable of logical and rational thinking". |
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| 13 | 1985 |
Li, Wenjun. Yuan hua yu sao dong yi yu duan xiang [ID D30401]. Li Wenjun described the difficulty of translating The sound and the fury by William Faulkner. "The sound and the fury haunted me day and night for almost two years. I felt as if I were living in a dream, sometimes sweet, but more often nightmarish". Tao Jie : In order to be prepared for the job, he had collected and studied a great many important critical works on Faulkner, reminiscences by Faulkner's friends and relatives, readers' guides, reference books and the dictionary about characters in Faulkner's works. He tried to find out about the characteristics and developments of stream-of-consciousness fiction. He read the novel so many times that he felt he knew the story inside out. He went to scholars and specialists for help and advice and asked American scholars visiting his Institute of Foreign Literature about American culture and customs and to confirm or correct his understanding of certain details in the novel. |
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| 14 | 1986 |
Mo, Yan. Liang zuo re de gao lu yi jia Xiya Maerkesi he Fukena [ID D30402]. "In 1985 I wrote five novelettes and about a dozen short stories. They were all undoubtedly influenced by foreign literature in theme and in art. The two novels that had the greates impact on me at the time were Garcia Marquez's One hundred years of solitude and Faulkner's The sound and the fury." |
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| 15 | 1988 |
Liu Baiyu. Tan yi ri ji san ze [ID D30304]. Liu Baiyu spoke highly of Faulkner's achievement in artistic skills and his accomplishment as a human being. He pointed out that the starting point for Faulkner studies should be "how he used different devices to express a great but tragic theme". It seems to me that Liu Baiyu was thinking of the recent situation in which more and more young Chinese writers became interested only in the mechanism of techniques and in writing about crimes and sex when he stressed that "Faulkner did not give up the essential principle of the form being decided by the content ; Faulkner never did away with the experience of reality in his works ; he did not take sex as the only subject of his writing ; and he did not use stream-of-consciousness technique or other artistic devices just to show off". |
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| 16 | 1989 |
Interview by Tao Jie with Zhao Jiabi and Shi Zhecun in Shanghai about the long silence [ca. 1936-1949] about William Faulkner in China. "Faulkner is not easy to understand. Faulkner's novels were too difficult to translate into Chinese. Very few people had read him or could find his books in Chinese even if they were interested. The other reason was the political situation at the time, especially the threat of Japanese invasion. Most people were concerned about the possibility of China's becoming a colony of some foreign power. As the result, they were more interested in novels about social injustices and the rebellions of the people." |
Sources (16)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1932 | Shi, Zhecun. [Editor's notes]. In : Xian dai ; vol. 1 (1932). [Betr. William Faulkner]. | Publication / Faul26 | |
| 2 | 1934 |
Shi, Zhecun. Meiguo xiao shuo zhi cheng zhang. In : Xian dai ; vol. 6 (1934). [Enthält] : Artikel über William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, u.a. Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. Elly. In : Story ; vol. 4, no. 19 (Febr. 1934). 美国小说之成长 |
Publication / Faul27 | |
| 3 | 1934 |
[Waldman, Milton]. Jin dai Meiguo xiao shuo zhi qu shi. Zhao Jiabi yi. In : Xian dai ; May (1934). [Trends in recent American fiction. Betr. William Faulkner]. 近代美国小说之趋势 |
Publication / Faul28 | |
| 4 | 1934 | Ling, Changyan. Fukena : yi ge xin zuo feng de chang shi zhe. In : Xian dai ; vol. 6 (1934). [William Faulkner : an experimentalist of a new style]. | Publication / Faul29 | |
| 5 | 1958 | [Faulkner, William. Victory. Zhao Luorui yi : Death drag, Huang Xingxi yi]. In : Yi wen ; vol. 4 (April 1958). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. Victory. In : The Saturday Evening Post ; Oct. 12 (1932). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. Death drag. In : Scribner's magazine ; vol. 91, no 1 (Jan. 1932). | Publication / Faul31 | |
| 6 | 1964 |
Yuan, Kejia. Ying mei yi shi liu xiao shuo ping shu. In : Wen xue yan jiu ji kan ; vol. 1 (1964). [Survey of stream-of-consciousness fiction in Britain and America]. [Betr. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner]. 英美意识流小说评述 |
Publication / YuanK3 | |
| 7 | 1979 |
[Faulkner, William]. Fukena duan pian xiao shuo san pian. In : Wai guo wen yi ; no 6 (1979). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. A rose for Emily. In : Forum ; April 30 (1930). Dry September. In : Scribner's magazine ; vol. 89, no 1 (Jan. 1931). Barn burning. In : Harpers magazine ; vol. 179, no 1069 (June 1939). 福克纳短篇小说三篇 |
Publication / Faul35 |
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| 8 | 1981 | [Faulkner, William. Two soldiers]. In : Wai guo wen xue ; vol. 4 (1981). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. Two soldiers. In : Saturday evening post ; vol. 214, no 39 (March 29, 1942). | Publication / Faul32 |
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| 9 | 1981 | [Faulkner, William. A justice]. In : Chun feng ; vol. 4 (1981). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William.A justice. In : Faulkner, William. These 13 : stories. (New York, N.Y. : J. Cape & H. Smith, 1931). | Publication / Faul33 |
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| 10 | 1985 |
[Faulkner, William]. Fukena zhong duan pian xiao shuo xuan. Shi jie wen xue bian ji bu bian. (Beijing : Zhongguo wen lian chu ban gong si, 1985). [Übersetzung ausgewählter Short stories von Faulkner]. [Enthält] : Justice, Red leaves, My grandmother Millar, A rose for Emily, Spotted horses, Barn burning, Shingles for the lord, The tall men, Shall not perish, That evening sun, Pantaloon in black, Ad astra, All the dead pilots, A bear hunt, Wash, Carcassonne, The bear, Old man. Stoneback, H.R. William Faulkner and the sense of community ; Faulkner's Nobel prize acceptance speech ; Bibliography of Faulkner's works ; Chronology of Faulkner's life and career ; Voss, Arthur. William Faulkner : a virtuoso storyteller. 福克纳中短篇小说选 |
Publication / Faul12 |
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| 11 | 1985 |
Li, Wenjun. Yuan hua yu sao dong yi yu duan xiang. In : Du shu ; no 3 (1985). [Translator's review of The sound and the fury by William Faulkner]. 喧哗与骚动译余断想 |
Publication / Faul38 | |
| 12 | 1986 | Mo, Yan. Liang zuo re de gao lu yi jia Xiya Maerkesi he Fukina. In : Shi jie wen xue ; vol. 3 (1986). [Two burning furnaces : Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner]. | Publication / Faul39 | |
| 13 | 1988 | [Faulkner, William. The sound and the fury ; As I lay dying]. In : Shi jie wen xue ; no 5 (1988). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. The sound and the fury. (New York, N.Y. : J. Cape and H. Smith 1929). Übersetzung von von Faulkner, William. As I lay dying. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1930). | Publication / Faul40 |
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| 14 | 1988 |
Liu Baiyu. Tan yi ri ji san ze. In : Wen yi bao ; May 14 (1988). [Faulkner. In : Liu, Baiyu. Three pieces of my journals]. 谈艺日记三则 |
Publication / Faul41 | |
| 15 | 1990 |
[Faulkner, William]. Wo mi liu zhi ji. Weilian Fukena ; Li Wenjun yi. (Guilin : Lijiang chu ban she, 1990). (Huo Nuobei'er wen xue jiang zuo jia cong shu ; 5). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. As I lay dying. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1930). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. The unvanquished. (New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1938). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. Delta autumn. In : Story ; vol. 20, no 95 (May-June 1942). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. Sherwood Anderson : an appreciation. In : Athlantic ; vol. 191, no 6 (June 1953). 我弥留之际 [Enthält] : Coindreau, Maurice Edgar. On translating Faulkner. In : Coindreau, Maurice Edgar. The time of William Faulkner. (Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 1971). Gresset, Michel. A Faulkner chronology. (Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 1985). |
Publication / Faul1 |
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| 16 | 1990 |
[Faulkner, William]. Fukena zuo pin jing cui. Tao Jie xuan bian. (Shijiazhuang : Hebei jiao yu chu ban she, 1990). (Shi jie wen xue bo lan). Übersetzung von Faulkner, William. The portable Faulkner. Ed. by Malcolm Cowley. (New York, N.Y. : Viking portable library, 1946). 福克纳作品精粹 [Enthält] : Red leaves ; Dry september ; That evening sun ; Delta autumn ; A rose for Emily ; An odor of Verbena ; Benjy's section ; Spotted horses ; Centaur in brass ; The tall men ; Wash ; Percy Grimm ; The bear ; On Sherwood Anderson ; The wishing tree ; Nobel prize acceptance speech. |
Publication / Faul13 |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zentralbibliothek Zürich | Organisation / ZB |
|