Table Of ContentTravel, Translation and
Transmedia Aesthetics
Franco-Chinese Literature and
Visual Arts in a Global Age
Shuangyi Li
Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics
Shuangyi Li
Travel, Translation
and Transmedia
Aesthetics
Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual
Arts in a Global Age
Shuangyi Li
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
ISBN 978-981-16-5561-6 ISBN 978-981-16-5562-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5562-3
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Till mitt oväntade kapitel i Sverige
Acknowledgements
I was able to carry out the research for this book project first thanks to a
two-yearpostdoctoralopportunityattheCentreforLanguagesandLiter-
ature (SOL) of Lund University in Sweden, which was then followed by
a three-year grant from the Swedish Research Council/Vetenskapsrådet
(2019–2021). I am therefore immensely grateful for both institutions’
generous support, which led to the conception and birth of this book in
a somewhat unexpected place. I must thank the steering committee of
the Komplitt research group based at Lund, Dr. Annika Mörte Alling,
Dr. Alexander Bareis, Dr. Christian Claesson, and Dr. Paul Tenngart,
as well as Prof. Anders Ohlsson, Dr. Henrik Rahm, and Prof. Anders
Pettersson, for having believed in the values and significance of real-
izing such a project in Sweden. I would like to extend my thanks to
colleaguesassociatedwiththeSectionofRomancelanguages,Dr.Vassilios
Sabatakakis,Prof.BjörnLarsson,Prof.JonasGranfeldt,Dr.MalinÅgren,
Dr. Mari Bacquin, Dr. Carla Killander Cariboni, Dr. Frida Splendido,
Dr. Felix Nicolau, Eugenia Arria, Elin Petrisson, Julia Tibblin, and Katja
Jansson,formakingourofficecorridorsuchajoyfulsiteofencounterand
exchange.
Over the past five years, I’ve been given precious opportunities to
present various parts of the book in Sweden and internationally. I would
first like to thank Alice Pick Duhan and Prof. Irmy Schweiger at Stock-
holm University, who invited me to present on François Cheng and Dai
Sijie, respectively, at the Department of Romance Studies and Classics
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies; Dr.
Heidrun Führer for inviting me to present at the Division of Intermedia
StudiesatLundandintroducingmetothewell-establishedIntermediality
network based in Sweden; Dr. Fabien Arribert-Narce for organizing such
awarmreceptionaftermypresentationonCheng’sandShan’scalligraphy
and novels at the University of Edinburgh, my alma mater; Dr. Michael
Ka-chi Cheuk at the Open University of Hong Kong for organizing an
online symposium on Gao Xingjian and transmediality, which pushed me
to reflect on the final chapter of the book. I would especially like to
express my gratitude to Prof. Ou Rong at Hangzhou Normal Univer-
sity in China for inviting me to present this project as one of the keynote
speakers at the International Symposiumon Interart/Intermedial Studies
Today,togetherwithsomeextremelywell-establishedscholarsinthefield.
My involvement in a few collaborative projects has significantly
enrichedmyreflectiononthebook.IwouldliketomentionDr.Herbert
Jonsson and his research team at Dalarna University in Sweden for
a project on border-crossing narratives; the project led by Prof. Jane
Hiddleston (University of Oxford) and Prof. Wen-chin Ouyang (School
of Oriental and African Studies, London) on multilingualism and world
literature; Dr. yasser elhariry at Dartmouth College in the US for a fran-
cophone project on sound and literature. I would like to thank Prof.
Stefan Helgesson at Stockholm University and Prof. Christina Kullberg
at Uppsala University for inviting me to participate in the major Swedish
literary research project entitled World Literatures: Cosmopolitan and
Vernacular Dynamics (2016–2021), which allowed me to work closely
with Prof. Katarina Leppänen (University of Gothenburg), Prof. Lena
Rydholm (Uppsala University), Dr. David Watson (Uppsala University),
and Prof. Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London). Different
parts of the book have benefited from comments and suggestions made,
as well as questions asked, by Prof. Marion Schmid (University of Edin-
burgh), Prof. Tam Kwok-Kan (The Hang Seng University of Hong
Kong), Dr. Lily Li (Eastern Kentucky University), the late Prof. Lars
Elleström (Linnæus University), Prof. Michelle Bloom (University of
California Riverside), Dr. Rosalind Silvester (Queen’s University Belfast),
Dr. Ileana Chirila (University of New Hampshire), and Dr. Xiaofan Amy
Li (University College London).
Versions of certain sections of the book have appeared as journal arti-
cles and book chapters. A much earlier version of Sect. 2.2 appeared as
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
“A‘SpiritualJourney’Throughthe‘Middle’Kingdom:TravelandTrans-
lation in François Cheng’s Translingual Novel” in the volume Narratives
Crossing Borders: Dynamics of Cultural Interaction (Stockholm Univer-
sity Press, 2021, 429–454), edited by Herbert Jonsson, Lovisa Berg,
Chatarina Edfeldt, and Bo G. Jansson; the analysis in Sect. 3.2 formed
part of the argument in the article “Transcultural Novels and Translating
Cultures: François Cheng’s Le Dit de Tianyi and L’Éternité n’est pas de
trop” in Forum for Modern Language Studies (53.2 [2017], pp. 179–
199); a condensed version of Sect. 3.3 was published in Essays in French
Literature and Culture (55 [2018], pp. 115–131); Sect. 4.2 appeared
as “(Sino)graphs in Franco(n)texts: The multilingual and the multimodal
inFranco-Chineseliteratureandvisualarts”inMultilingualLiteratureas
WorldLiterature (Bloomsbury,2021,pp.27–50),editedbyJaneHiddle-
ston and Wen-chin Ouyang; Sect. 5.1 appeared in Forum for Modern
Language Studies (55.4 [2019], pp. 359–379). I am very grateful to
the various parties for granting me permission to re-use some of the
material in this book. Very importantly, I must thank the four Franco-
Chinese artists François Cheng, Dai Sijie, Gao Xingjian, and Shan Sa for
grantingmethepermissiontoreproducetheimagesoftheirartworksfree
of charge, and my professional contact with them would not have been
madepossiblewithoutthekindhelpoffollowingpeople:Prof.MabelLee
(University of Sydney), Dr. Lijuan Zhu (Xizang Minzu University), Dr.
Xinyi Tan (Coastal Carolina University).
Last but not least, I must thank my family and friends who have made
the life of an early career scholar much more livable: my parents Li Wei
and Li Linwen, my sister Li Xia and brother-in-law Yi Lu; Maram Stern,
Michael Paparakis, Anton Holmgren, Claire Ménard, Vincent Gélinas-
Lemaire, Peter Cherry, Sebastian Mehrstedt, Anna Fürstenberg, Anna
Kraus,YuriCerqueiraDosAnjos,aswellassomeofthepeoplementioned
earlier, with whom I also have a working relationship. A lot has changed
in the world and each one of our lives in the past five years, but we must
return to chocolate, drinks, dinners, banter, laughter, dance moves, and
parties when the pandemic is over. In fact, can I already invite you all to
Bristol in the UK, where my next life adventure takes place?
Contents
1 Introduction 1
References 18
2 Diverse Forms of Travel and Translation
in Franco-Chinese Fiction 23
2.1 Overview 23
2.2 François Cheng’s “Spiritual Journey” Through
the “Middle” Kingdom 28
2.2.1 Temporal and Spatial Movements of Travel 31
2.2.2 Moving Through Mountain-Water 33
2.2.3 Quests for Knowledge and Love 44
2.2.4 Travel as Translation 50
References 53
3 Translingual Rewriting and Transhistorical Fabulation 57
3.1 Introduction 57
3.2 L’éternité n’est pas de trop and the Transcultural
Rewriting of Literary Traditions 59
3.3 Shan’s Transhistorical Novels and Exotic
Auto-Translation 71
3.4 Animals, Humans, and Fabulative Sextuality in Dai’s
L’Acrobatie aérienne de Confucius 84
3.4.1 The Sextual Genesis of the Novel 87
3.4.2 Animality, Sexuality, and Narrative Style 89
xi
xii CONTENTS
3.4.3 Race, Species, and Their Dangerous Crossings 101
References 107
4 Sinograph, Calligraphy, and Novelistic Aesthetics 115
4.1 The Transcultural Makeover of the Chinese Script
in Dai’s Franco-Chinese Novels 116
4.1.1 Exoticizing Proper Names in Balzac et la
Petite Tailleuse chinoise 118
4.1.2 Psychoanalyzing Ideograms in Le Complexe
de Di 123
4.1.3 Journey Through Languages in Par une nuit
où la lune ne s’est pas levée 130
4.2 (Sino)graphs in Franco(n)Texts: From Calligraphy
to Novels 138
4.2.1 François Cheng’s Travel Through Calligraphy 139
4.2.2 Shan Sa’s Calligraphic Approach to Impératrice 152
4.2.3 Sinographic Novelistic Aesthetics and World
Literature 162
References 165
5 Translational (Anti-)Storytelling and Transmedia
Aesthetics 169
5.1 Novel, Film, and the Art of Translational Storytelling:
Dai Sijie’s Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise 171
5.1.1 Transmedia Storytelling 174
5.1.2 Translation and Exophone Reading 181
5.1.3 Translation and Exoticism 189
5.2 Image Transformation as Translation Beyond
Narration in Gao Xingjian’s Alternative Cinematic
Expressions 194
5.2.1 Gao’s View of Cinema 195
5.2.2 Gao’s Cinematic Images 199
5.2.3 Translation as Transmedia Aesthetics 225
References 232
6 Conclusion 237
References 244
Index 247
