Short description:

This edited volume contains an excellent collection of contributions and presents various informative topics under the central theme: literary and translation approaches to China?s greatest classical novel Hongloumeng.

Long description:

This edited volume contains an excellent collection of contributions and presents various informative topics under the central theme: literary and translation approaches to China?s greatest classical novel Hongloumeng.

Acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, Hongloumeng (known in English as The Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone) epitomizes 18th century Chinese social and cultural life. Owing to its kaleidoscopic description of Chinese life and culture, the novel has also exerted a significant impact on world literature. Its various translations, either full-length or abridged, have been widely read by an international audience. The contributors to this volume provide a renewed perspective into Hongloumeng studies by bringing together scholarship in the fields of literary and translation studies. Specifically, the use of corpora in the framework of digital humanities in a number of chapters helps re-address many issues of the novel and its translations, from an innovative angle.

The book is an insightful resource for both scholars of Chinese literature and for linguists with a focus on translation studies.

Table of Contents:

1 Beyond the Gender Binary: An Analysis of the Representation of Androgyny in Wang Xifeng  2 Aestheticizing Masculinity in Hongloumeng: Clothing, Dress, and Decoration  3 The Red Chamber Dreams as an Intra- and Interculturally Integrative Masterpiece of World Literature with Unique Characteristics  4 A New Study on the "Second Master": The Generational Inheritance in Dream of the Red Chamber  5 The Characterization of Jia Zheng in the Father-Son Relationship in Hongloumeng  6 Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Hongloumeng  7 Revisiting the Anthologization of Hongloumeng in the Anglo-American Context during the 1960s  8 Power Play in Translation Production: The Exploration of Agents Involved in The Story of the Stone  9 Reconstructing the Translator?s Identity: A Paratextual Study of A Dream of Red Mansions and The Story of the Stone, Two English Translations of Hongloumeng  10 A Study of Lin Yutang?s Edited Translation of Hongloumeng and His Explicitation Strategies  11 Telling Versus Showing in Two English Translations of Hongloumeng  12 Hedges and Boosters as Indicators of Translation Style: With Reference to Fictional Dialogues in Hongloumeng Translations  13 Characterization in Two English Versions of Hongloumeng: A Corpus-Based Approach  14 The Reception of the English Translations of Hongloumeng: Insights from Topic Modeling