Mirror From The Outside:The Study Of Stephen Owen’s Research On Du Fu’s Poetry

Du Fu’s poems have been spread to the west for nearly 300 years.American sinologist Stephen Owen translated the complete collection of Du Fu’s poems into English in 2016,marking a new peak in the journey of Du Fu’s poems to the world.This article surveys the characteristics of Stephen Owen’s research on Du Fu’s poetry from the perspective of Sino-Western dialogue.Firstly,it starts from the core concepts of Du Fu’s research,“the sage of poetry” and “poetry as history” in the perspective of comparative poetics.The both concepts in Owen’s works all point to Du Fu himself,and he tended to consider Du Fu as a professional poet in view of pure literature,trying to cancel the cultural significance of Du Fu.Furthermore,it starts from two aspects of Owen’s research on Du Fu’s poetry—the research on Du Fu’s image and the interpretation of Du Fu’s poems.From the perspective of Imagologie,Owen constructed a non-Confucian image of poet Du Fu and a non-personalized cultural image.There are not only the inevitable variations in cross-cultural interpretation,but also Owen’s conscious aesthetic reconstruction.Owen put forward many new explanations on the nature,style and internal mode of Du Fu’s poems,and further explained the contrast mode in Du Fu’s poems in translation,which not only formed a dialogue between China and the West with Mr.Cheng Qianfan’s views,but also contributed to Western Sinologist’s unique perspectives.Although as a western scholar,Owen’s study and translations are essentially to meet their own academic research needs,but objectively,they play an irreplaceable role in promoting Du Fu’s poetry to the world literature.We can also learn from the perspective and methods of overseas sinologists,so as to promote the new vitality of Chinese culture,while better to the world.