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2020-21 School of Chinese Seminar

Cantonese Pirates in World Literature: the Legend of Ching I Sao

(Cheung Po Tsai’s stepmother/wife) according to Jorge Luis Borges

廣東海盜與世界文學：波赫士筆下的鄭一嫂（張保仔之妻）

Dr. Yunfei Bai

柏雲飛博士

The University of Hong Kong

香港大學

Date日期: May 24, 2021 (Monday)

Time時間: 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Venue地點: Room730, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus & via Zoom

Language演講語言: English英文

https://hku.zoom.us/j/97429406058?pwd=SDZuUTdncXkyVjlCc1FiYzhuZmdFZz09

Zoom Meeting ID: 974 2940 6058

Password: 148774

Abstract:

This talk traces how the Jinghai Fenji (Record of the Pacification of Pirates) by Qing dynasty historian Yuan Yonglun blossomed—through repeated translation and rewriting—into the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’s famous short story “La viuda Ching, pirata” (The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate) in the latter’s 1935 collection, Historia Universal de la Infamia, known in English as A Universal History of Infamy. The original text, published in Canton in 1830, was translated into English by German sinologist Charles Neumann in 1831; this in turn was further adapted by British writer Philip Gosse into a portion of his History of Piracy, upon which Borges, knowing no Chinese, based his own retelling. By closely comparing Borges’s reworking with the previous Western versions, and against the original source in Chinese, I argue that when adapting the Chinese work, Borges opted for brevity, self-reference, and lightheartedness, moreover, his multivoiced “baroque” Orientalism proved a self-conscious parody of itself while caricaturing the biases of Chinese officialese at face value, thereby offering a corrective to the fallacies of cultural appropriation.

本次講座旨在通過一個具體的案例來探討文學作品通過不斷的翻譯和改寫來實現全球流通的有趣現象。具體言之，清代史官袁永綸於1830年在廣州出版了記錄嘉慶年間清廷剿滅華南海盜經過的《靖海氛記》一書。僅僅一年之後，德國漢學家紐曼便將該書翻譯成英文在倫敦出版。在1932年出版的《海盜史》一書中，英國通俗作家戈斯根據紐曼的譯本重新演繹了一段以海盜領袖鄭一嫂（張保仔之妻）為中心的異域故事。不久之後，阿根廷文學大師波赫士根據戈斯的版本進一步將鄭一嫂的傳奇經歷改寫成了他的著名短篇小說《女海盜金寡婦》。通過一種建立在極簡敘事， 自我指涉和趣味性之上的“巴羅克” 式的再創作，波赫士在嘲諷中國史官對挑戰帝國秩序者所帶有的意識形態偏見的同時也消解了“東方主義”敘事的嚴肅性，從而有效規避了文化挪用的諸多陷阱與風險。

Bio:

Yunfei Bai is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. A polyglot, he is broadly interested in the tangled relationship between translation/rewriting, nationalism, Orientalism, and the global dissemination of world literature under state regulation of the book market. His recent articles have appeared and are forthcoming in journals including Comparative Literature Studies, French Forum, French Cultural Studies, Revue d’Études Tibétaines, Archiv orientální, China Perspectives, and Translation Studies.

柏雲飛博士畢業于美國羅格斯大學，目前在香港大學文學院擔任博士後研究員。作為一名多語言者，他現階段主要關注文學作品如何通過翻譯和改寫來實現全球流通，以及相應傳播路徑與東方主義，民族主義，出版物審查制度等諸多意識形態因素之間錯綜複雜的關係。他最新的期刊文章付梓或即將見刊於Comparative Literature Studies, French Forum, French Cultural Studies, Revue d’Études Tibétaines, Archiv orientální, China Perspectives, 以及 Translation Studies.

ALL are welcome