Translated images of the foreign in the early works of Lin Shu (1852-1924) and Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973): Accommodation and appropriation

This dissertation is on foreign images--of China and the West--created by Lin Shu, the first major translator of Western fiction, and Pearl S. Buck, the first Western writer of fiction on China to engage American readers' sympathies. Following the recent "cultural turn" in Translation Studies, both are considered "translators" who "translated" the experiences of foreign others. The introduction presents my rationale for treating them as such and for juxtaposing them.; My focus is on how Lin and Buck "accommodated" foreign material for uninitiated readers, as well as on how they "appropriated" this material to express their own literary or social agendas, or, in one case, how readers did their own appropriations. I am especially concerned to show the changes in attitude towards "translation" in these two authors' earliest works, and I make full use of readers' responses, including book reviews, reaction poems, and essays.; A chapter each is on Lin's first two translations. In the first, on Bali chahua nu yishi (The true tale of the Parisian lady of the camellias; 1899), a popular rendering into classical Chinese of Alexandre Dumas fils' (1824-95) La dame aux camelias, I show how Lin accommodated readers by presenting the story as if it were a Tang dynasty literary language tale. The second is on Heinu yutian lu (The black slave cries out to heaven; 1901), Lin's appropriation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's (1811-96) Uncle Tom's Cabin as a call-to-arms against the "Exclusion Laws" then affecting Chinese laborers in the American West. Lin warns that if Chinese do not act, they will be worse off than the novel's slaves.; The last two chapters treat Buck's early efforts to depict the foreign. The first is on two essays, "In China, Too," (1923) and "Beauty in China," (1924), and her first published story, "A Chinese Woman Speaks," (1926). The second is on The Good Earth (1931). Buck did not see China as foreign, and presumed to write not only for her compatriots, but also for China's educated elite. Ironically, while Chinese found her unflinching portraits of peasants degrading, Westerners tended to find them noble. I conclude that while both writers were concerned that China preserve its national identity vis a vis the West, they advocated different solutions. Lin moved from reliance on Chinese values towards engagement with the West; Buck preached instead a moving away from the West back towards Chinese values.