A Study On Translation's Impact On Chinese New Poetry During The Period Of The May Fourth Movement From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

The development of a literature often takes its counterpart as strong momentum. In China, the interaction amid different literatures was brought to the best play in the period of the May Fourth Movement, a vital turning point in Chinese literary history.During this period, foreign literature played a decisive role in molding Chinese new literature. Compared with "Literary Revolution" in the late 19th century, the most remarkable phenomenon of the May Fourth New Literary Revolution was the uprising of Chinese new poetry. It was foreign literature that gave birth to Chinese new poetry. In this period, verse translation enjoyed its heyday. Various literary schools as well as new poets of great talents came forth in large numbers. If we take a close look at the poets of this period, we can detect their double identities: both poet and translator.Thus, to make a probation into how a translator's translation helps change his poetics and ideologies so as to result in the shift of his creation norms will be an intriguing problem and of academic worth.In this thesis, my focus is not the detailed comparison between a certain poet's translated poems and his original ones; instead, the internal factors and the concrete process resulting in the impact will be highlighted. This thesis will base its analysis on theories of reception aesthetics represented by Jauss and Iser, especially the terms of "horizon of expectation", "negation" and "wandering viewpoint".Due to limited space, this thesis narrows its objective down to the most influential poetic school instead of putting all poets of that time intodiscussion.Besides Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis falls into five chapters.Chapter One is a panoramic survey of the verse translation and Chinese new poetry creation during the period of the May Fourth Movement.Chapter Two presents theoretical basis, namely reception aesthetics, involved in this thesis. The theories of Jauss and Iser, "two stars of reception aesthetics", are included.Based on the conception of "horizon of expectation" put forth by Jauss, Chapter Three construes the premise of translation's impact on creation. In addition, Tagore vogue and its impact during the period of the May Fourth Movement will be taken as a case study.Chapter Four employs Iser's notion of "negation" to analyze concrete shift of translator's ideology, poetics in the course of translation and then furthers the probation through elucidating Hu Shi and Guo Moruo's "negation" in their verse translation.Chapter Five analyzes the internal impetus that results in translator's wandering among different poets so as to lead to the continuous shifting of his writing norms from the perspective of "wandering viewpoint" put forth by Iser. Guo Moruo' s wandering among Tagore, Heine, Whitman, Shelley and Goethe will be taken as a case study.