Member Profile
Name:
Miss Xi (bonnie) Liu
Institution:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Academic status:
Extended Doctoral Researcher
Main discipline:
Literary Studies
Additional disciplines:
Art History
Cultural Studies
History
Cultural Studies
History
Other societies:
1. The Gaskell Journal (in Japan)
2. Japanese Association for Chinese Literature and Art Studies
3. The Japan Society for Literature and Christianity
4. Kwansei Gakuin University Graduate School
The Society of Language, Communication, and Culture
2. Japanese Association for Chinese Literature and Art Studies
3. The Japan Society for Literature and Christianity
4. Kwansei Gakuin University Graduate School
The Society of Language, Communication, and Culture
Research interests:
Making a cultural comparison between British and Chinese literature. Using English, Chinese and Japanese to undertake academic research is not easy, but it also enabled me to collect and study more academic sources in a multilingual context.
1. Numerous reviews, journals, publications and contemporary academic papers which I have collected from both Japanese and Chinese libraries demonstrate that especially from 1917 to 1937, unprecedented enthusiasm for translations of foreign literature bubbled up in the Chinese literary world. Five of Gaskell’s works, for example, had been translated and published in Shanghai since 1916. At the initial stage, I compared Cranford (1851-53) and the Chinese-language version, translated by the influential scholar Wu Guangjian in 1927. My findings have suggested that Cranford was modified for acceptance by Chinese readers during a period of ideological transition. Such a comparison, moreover, has manifested that Gaskell adopts an ambivalent position toward Victorian social transformation.
2. In identifying the connection between Gaskell and Chinese writers, I coincidentally noticed that Virginia Woolf had particularly recommended The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) to writer Ling Shuhua, who had an extramarital affair with the nephew of Woolf. Encouraged by Woolf, Ling even wrote her own life story in English under the title Ancient Melodies (1953). I currently focusing on how the two writers represent temporality in their life-writings.
3. I also compared Chen Hengzhe’s Autobiography of a Chinese Young Girl (1935) and Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899) in my dissertation.
1. Numerous reviews, journals, publications and contemporary academic papers which I have collected from both Japanese and Chinese libraries demonstrate that especially from 1917 to 1937, unprecedented enthusiasm for translations of foreign literature bubbled up in the Chinese literary world. Five of Gaskell’s works, for example, had been translated and published in Shanghai since 1916. At the initial stage, I compared Cranford (1851-53) and the Chinese-language version, translated by the influential scholar Wu Guangjian in 1927. My findings have suggested that Cranford was modified for acceptance by Chinese readers during a period of ideological transition. Such a comparison, moreover, has manifested that Gaskell adopts an ambivalent position toward Victorian social transformation.
2. In identifying the connection between Gaskell and Chinese writers, I coincidentally noticed that Virginia Woolf had particularly recommended The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) to writer Ling Shuhua, who had an extramarital affair with the nephew of Woolf. Encouraged by Woolf, Ling even wrote her own life story in English under the title Ancient Melodies (1953). I currently focusing on how the two writers represent temporality in their life-writings.
3. I also compared Chen Hengzhe’s Autobiography of a Chinese Young Girl (1935) and Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899) in my dissertation.