Ovid’s debut in Chinese: translating the Ars amatoria into the Republican discourse of love

Abstract

AbstractThe first complete Chinese translation of Ovid’s poem was Dai Wangshu’s (1905–50) 1929 Ai jing (Ars amatoria). Dai, as translator-cum-publisher, produced a serious translation with thorough footnotes and a scholarly preface (later added). Yet in a newspaper advertisement, he also marketed the book in sensational language as a pragmatic love manual that could help Chinese ‘men and women of sentiment’ master the art of courting. Focusing on Dai’s seemingly conflicting marketing approaches, this article locates the production and reception of Dai’s translation of the Ars amatoria in its socio-cultural and ideological contexts. Dai adapted his Chinese Ars amatoria to an emerging Chinese discourse of love in the 1920s, when love remained at the centre of many literary, social, and political debates. It also further demonstrates how Ovid’s Ars amatoria, in Dai’s translation, animated sustained discussions of love, marriage, and gender in China in the early 1930s. Re-interpreted and re-appropriated, a classic Latin text extended Republican China’s quest for modernization and Westernization to the most intimate realms of ordinary experience.