A Comparative Study Of The Female Images In Lady Windermere’s Fan And Its Chinese Translations

Since the May Fourth Movement,excellent playwriters such as Hong Shen,Li Jianwu and Jiao Juyin have introduced western dramas to transform China’s traditional dramas,which galvanize the development of Chinese modern dramas.Though the drama practice is in full swing,the studies on Chinese drama translation is still lagging behind.Compared with the achievement of western scholars made on translation studies,Chinese drama translation studies need more attention.This thesis takes the three Chinese translations of Lady Windermere’s Fan as the analyzed materials,by comparing the classical female image of Lady Windermere’s Fan,Lady Windermere,with the representations of three Chinese translations,to analyze the transmutation of the female image in three translations and further explore the social and cultural reasons.To achieve the research objective,the author raises three questions: first,how does the classical female image of Lady Windermere represent respectively in three Chinese translations? Second,what are the differences of the classical image between three Chinese translations and the one of Lady Windermere’s Fan? At last,how does the transmutation demonstrate the psychological changes of society to the reception of the female image in western literature?With the case study analysis and text analysis approaches,the comparative study on the three Chinese translations of Lady Windemere’s Fan aims to represent the image transmutation of female image in different social-cultural backgrounds.Borrowing the conceptual apparatus of imagology,the author finds that the female image of Lady Windemere,has transformed from a typical Chinese woman to a modern western woman,at the same time,it is found that social collective imaginations,translation views and women’s movements have outsize influence on the psychological reception of western female images.This thesis attempts to broaden the perspectives of drama translation studies.The drama images are contained with profound social and cultural meanings,which reflect the social backgrounds in particular periods.Also,the images transmutation of drama translations mirrors Chinese people’s psychological reception Chinses people.Although translation studies have a more and more close relations with imagology,the imagological studies in the field of drama translation still need to be enrich.Therefore,this study can increase the experiences on the female images of drama translation studies.