About Us

Modern East Asian Literature Research Cluster presents
Emerging Research on Modern East Asian Literature

The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture

Speaker: Pu WANG

Associate Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture | Brandeis University

Moderator: Shuk Man LEUNG

Assistant Professor | Chinese Language and Literature, School of Chinese | University of Hong Kong

30 March 2022 (Wed), 10:00–11:30am (Zoom, HKT)

The first comprehensive study of the lifework of Guo Moruo (1892–1978) in English, this book explores the dynamics of translation, revolution, and historical imagination in twentieth-century Chinese culture. Guo’s career, embedded in China’s revolutionary century, has generated more controversy than admiration. Recent scholarship has scarcely treated his oeuvre as a whole, much less touched upon his role as a translator. Leaping between different genres of Guo’s works, and engaging many other writers’ texts, The Translatability of Revolution confronts two issues of revolutionary cultural politics: translation and historical interpretation. It focuses on the translingual making of China’s revolutionary culture, especially Guo’s translation of Faust as a “development of Zeitgeist.” The book also deals with Guo’s rewritings of antiquity in lyrical, dramatic, and historiographical-paleographical forms, including his vernacular translation of classical Chinese poetry. 

WANG Pu is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature and Chair of Comparative Literature at Brandeis University. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature at NYU in 2012, and studied at Peking University from 1999 to 2006. Dr Wang is also a poet writing in Chinese. 

The series is coordinated by Dr. Su Yun Kim (suyunkim@hku.hk), Dr. Pei-yin Lin (pylin@hku.hk), and Dr. Alvin Wong (akhwong@hku.hk). For the seminar series, check our website www.meal.hku.hk

For registration of the seminar, go to https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0udOirrz0vHtyi_3f4p1A-V8LtIHWi3h0v