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- Title
THE RED CHAMBER DREAMS AS PART OF THE CANON OF WORLD LITERATURE AND SOME COMPARISONS WITH SORROWS OF THE YOUNG WERTHER.
- Authors
Woesler, Martin
- Abstract
Despite the extremely different historical and cultural setting, at the end of the 18th century, the Red Chambers Dreams stimulated a similar fever in China as Goethe’s Sorrows of the Young Werther stimulated in Europe with manifestations in merchandising products and copy suicides. This study introduces the topic of arranged marriages vs. love matches as joint motiv in both, Europe and China at the end of the 18th century, most prominently with the Dreams and the Werther. This archetype ranges prominently among the first translations of literature between Europe and China. The study encourages further studies on a comparison of mechanisms and agents of canonization of the Dreams in China and other examples of world literature in other national literatures, with special attention to the role of the novel genre, which was still quite young in China. The study points out some connections between the Dreams and Western culture e.g. a few similarities to Christianity in the Dreams. It also refers to the reception of Chinese literature in the West with special attention to the problems of translation and language learning. Less than 30 years after its publication, the Dreams were already available in English and French excerpts, published in Europe. Although Goethe seemingly did not get to know the Dreams, Chinese novels in translation was one of the key components stimulating his invention of the concept of world literature.
- Subjects
ENGLISH translations of Chinese literature; SORROWS of Young Werther, The (Book : Goethe); COMPARATIVE studies
- Publication
Far East / Dálný Východ, 2014, Vol 4, Issue 2, p31
- ISSN
1805-1049
- Publication type
Article