Bernard Shaw's passage to China: Literary transmission as a process of cultural globalization

This dissertation is an attempt both to explore history, and to analyze the generative forces behind the recordable facts. Different kinds of histories are presented: literal history in the real passage made by Bernard Shaw to China, literary history in the passage of Shaw's works to China, and theatre history in the production of Shaw's plays in China. I propose that cultural globalization played a significant role in shaping these histories. This study is not only a record of the past, but also has an eye for the future, since the generative forces of cultural globalization are not only relevant for the past, but may give a clue for future endeavours to study the passage of cultural products across time and space.; The generative forces behind cultural globalization are complex and often work together. While there is a centrifugal push towards the global and universal, simultaneously there is a centripetal pull towards the local and particular. Cultural identities will not be lost in globalization, but will be enriched and enhanced.; In this study, attention is paid to five pairs of conflicting forces of cultural globalization. Chapter Two shows cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization at work in the appropriation of the image of Confucius in Back to Methuselah, and the use of the Chinese shrine in Buoyant Billions. The conflicting forces of tradition and modernity operating behind the first introduction of “spoken drama” are examined in Chapter Three. Chapters Four and Five focus on the concerns with globalization and westernization in the first introduction of Shaw's ideas and plays to China. The interesting media coverage of Shaw's real passage to China can be found in Chapter Six, which shows the conflict between globalization and nationalism. The review in Chapter Seven of several performances of Shaw's plays from the 1950s to the 1990s exhibits simultaneous tendencies toward globalization and localization.; Examining the generative forces behind cultural globalization illuminates the working of the selection process behind literary transmission, identifying the enabling and inhibiting forces, and gives the clues to the planning of strategies to market cultural products abroad. Literary transmission may be regarded as a process of cultural globalization.