Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7148-8010
Abstract
Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales, renowned for their aesthetic refinement and ethical resonance, encountered a distinctive and historically contingent reception in early twentieth-century China. This study examines the translation and introduction of these fairy tales across three key periods (1909–1919; 1919–1937; 1937–1949), arguing that translation and introduction practices were shaped not by a unified logic but by shifting literary, ideological, and sociopolitical conditions. The study employs Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the “third space” as an analytical model, conceptualizing translation and introduction as sites of negotiation in which meaning is reinterpreted through the interaction between aestheticism and Chinese intellectual movements. The analysis demonstrates how Wilde’s fairy tales were repeatedly reframed to accommodate changing cultural priorities, from early elite reception and reformist appropriation to broader vernacular dissemination and subsequent wartime reinterpretation. It focuses on three key questions: the initial selection of “The Happy Prince”, the shift from classical to vernacular Chinese, and the emergence of Ba Jin as the sole new translator after 1937. It reveals how aesthetic affinity, linguistic reform and ideological adaptation informed translation choices. By situating Wilde’s reception within a dynamic third space, this study posits that translation and introduction function as mediating practices that facilitate cross-cultural transmission and reconfigure literary meaning in response to historical exigencies. This underscores the role of translation and introduction as a transformative and generative force in the formation of modern Chinese literary discourse and in the reimagining of cultural and intellectual traditions.
Recommended Citation
Wang, Lin
(2026)
"Translation and Introduction in the Third Space: Wilde’s Fairy Tales in Early Twentieth-Century China,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
50, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2275
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss50/3
