Ling Shuhua And Bloomsbury

This thesis is going to investigate the literary and cultural relationships between Ling Shuhua and Bloomsbury from a perspective of Comparative Literature. Ling Shuhua, a famous painter and novelist in 1930s, is awarded as"Chinese Bloomsburian"by her lover named Julian Bell of the second generation of Bloomsbury. This relationship brought Ling Shuhua a great interest in translating her former novels into English together with Julian Bell to open a potential English market, whereas the translation itself indicates the diversified as well as typical factor for cross-cultural dialogue. From the study, we see Julian Bell changed some Chinese expression and idiom to make the novel easier for English readers and Ling Shuhua also tried some extra topics, e.g. sex in her novel. Julian not only helped Ling Shuahua with her literary works, but also brought her into a complete network of Bloomsbury, e. g. Virginal Woolf, Vanessa Bell. With Bloomsbury's help, Ling Shuhua published her autobiography Ancient Melodies in England in 1953. While mainly written for English readers, this book shows a vivid picture of Chinese life in Ling Shuhua's time. How much does the book compromise to meet up with English taste? How much does it reserve its"Chinese favor"? Is there any links between Ling Shuhua and Virginal Woolf in terms of writing skills or feminism?This thesis will be divided into 4 chapters. The first chapter gives a general introduction of Bloomsbury in China, of which Xu Zhimo, Ling Shuhua, Yejunjian, Xiao Qian will be detailed studied of the influence upon them by Bloomsbury. The Second chapter mainly deals with the cultural relationship between Ling Shuhua and Julian Bell, which will come to 2 parts, the translation indicates a cross-cultural attitude and the sex topic as well as autobiography encouraged by Julian Bell to Ling Shuhua. The Third chapter will introduce the relationship between Ling Shuhua and Virginal Woolf, where a feminism topic will be discussed. The fourth chapter will be the summary.