From Guwen to Chinese Literature

Abstract

This article examines the Sinologists’ conceptually mediated approach in their studies and translations of Chinese literature in the nineteenth century. Gems of Chinese Literature (1884), compiled and translated by Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), contains the English translation of 110 Chinese prose extracts and eight poems from fifty-nine Chinese authors. This article historicizes the genesis and construction of this translation anthology and argues that, though most likely derived from a Chinese guwen (classical prose) collection, it was designed to provide a more systematic view of Chinese literature informed by the concept of national literature. By analysing its organizational strategies, discursive paratexts, and how it deviated from its possible Chinese source, the author demonstrates that Gems of Chinese Literature reveals more complex questions concerning the (re-)conceptualization and representation of Chinese literature at the encounter of Chinese and Western literary paradigms.