Dear colleagues, I am pleased to announce the publication of History Retold: Premodern Chinese Texts in Western Translation, the second volume of the Brill series Chinese Texts in the World. Its table of contents is appended to the end of this message.

History Retold: Premodern Chinese Texts in Western Translation
Volume Editors: Leo Tak-hung Chan and Zong-qi Cai
ISBN: 978-90-04-52131-5
Publication date: 30 Sep 2022
Publisher: Brill

This collected volume focuses on the history of Western translation of premodern Chinese texts from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Divided into three parts, nine chapters feature close readings of translated texts, micro-studies of how three translations came into being, and broad-based surveys that inquire into the causes of historical change. Among the specific questions addressed are: What stylistic, generic, and discursive permutations were undergone by Chinese texts as they crossed linguistic borders? Who were the main agents in this centuries-long effort to transmit Chinese culture to the West? How did readership considerations affect the form that particular translations take? More generally, the contributors are concerned with the relevance of current research paradigms, like those of World Literature, transcultural reception, and the rewriting of translation history.

CONTENTS

1 Introduction: Translation Histories, Micro and Macro
Leo Tak-hung Chan and Zong-qi Cai

Part 1 Texts in History
2 The “Double Effect” of Translation in Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat’s Iu-Kiao-Li
Daniel M. Youd

3 Peritextual Performance: Théodore Pavie’s Histoire des Trois Royaumes
Sarah Bramao-Ramos

4 From Scripture to Literature: Translations of the Shijing by James Legge and Arthur Waley
Fusheng Wu

Part 2 Untold Microhistories
5 Sinological Positioning: The Giles-Waley Debate and the Inception of Arthur Waley’s Chinese Translations, 1917–1922
Lynn Qingyang Lin

6 Monkey’s Peregrinations in the West: An Archival Study of Publishers’ Reception of Arthur Waley’s Translation of the Xiyouji
Lintao Qi

7 The Making of a Book of Wisdom: Hermann Keyserling and Richard Wilhelm’s I Ging
Tze-ki Hon

Part 3 Toward the Macrohistorical
8 The Genesis of Dao Knowledge at the Beginning of Orientalism
Sophie Ling-chia Wei

9 Dreams and Plums of World Literature: The Honglou meng and Jin Ping Mei in English (1827–1939)
Andrew Schonebaum

10 Coda: Histoire Croisée and the Early European Translators: Missionaries, Scholars, Aesthetes
Leo Tak-hung Chan

Index of Individuals and Institutions
Index of Texts Cited
Index of Subjects