The Dilemma and Choices of Indirect Translation: The Transformation of Chinese Classical Novels in Europe from the Early Translations of Yu Jiaoli

ABSTRACT

Previous studies on the Yu jiaoli 玉嬌梨 (The Two Fair Cousins) often directly compared the English indirect translation with the Chinese original by neglecting the French translation as the intermedia, treating the two translators as one person and collectively referring to them as the “Westerners.” This article reexamines French translation and English indirect translation in the Anglo-French competition in the early 19th century. Influenced by the trend of Academic Sinology established in France and the dominating French way of intellectual trade between China and Europe, the French translation showed more faithfulness than literariness. However, the English translator was faced with the dilemma and choices of translation – relying on Abel-Rémusat’s good reputation and being more faithful to his translation or being deviated from the French translation by intentional mistranslations, abridgment, and deletions of the main text and the paratext under the multiple purposes of economy, politics, business, and culture. The English translator’s unfamiliarity with the Chinese language has inadvertently produced more mistranslations, further increasing the distance from the French translation.

摘要

之前关于玉嬌梨 （The Two Fair Cousins）的研究，经常直接将英译与汉译进行比较，忽略了法译作为中介，将其中两位译者视为一个人，统称为“西方人”。本文重新审视19世纪初英法竞争中的法语直译本和英语间接译本。受法国学术汉学思潮的影响和法国主导的中欧知识贸易方式的影响，法语译本更显忠实性，而文学性相对较弱。然而，英语译者面临着翻译的困境和选择——依赖阿贝尔·雷穆沙的良好声誉，更加忠实于他的翻译，还是在经济、政治、商业和文化的多重目的下，由于有意误译、删节和删除正文和副文而偏离了法语翻译。英语译者对汉语的不熟悉无意中产生了更多的误译，进一步增加了与法语翻译的距离。

KEYWORDS:

• Yu Jiaoli
• indirect translation
• Abel-rémusat

关键词:

• 《玉嬌梨》
• 间接翻译
• 阿贝尔·雷慕沙

1. Introduction

“In the mid-seventeenth century a type of vernacular romance appeared that literary studies and colloquial parlance refer to as the story of the ‘scholar and the beauty’ (caizi jiaren [才子佳人])” (McMahon 1995: 99), and in referring to these works, I use the term caizi jiaren romances (or “scholar-beauty” romances) instead of caizi jiaren novels (or “scholar-beauty” novels) in order to distinguish the Chinese xiaoshuo 小說 [novel; fiction; story] and “novel” in English. Since the eighteenth century, when Classical Chinese literature encountered the West, these works lived their “many afterlives in Anglo-American, French, German, Spanish, Scandinavian, Korean, and other contexts” (Chan 2003: 21) in that “European interest in and experimentation with fictional narrative also accelerated and intensified in the course of the eighteenth century” (Sieber 2013: 37). The “beauty-scholar” romances usually “revolve around the outworking of a single plot thread, the marriage of the scholar and the beauty or main female and male protagonists,” and the themes “include the fairy-talesque elevation of women, a celebration of father-daughter relations, the injurious wielding of power by some officials with its concomitant retribution” (Starr 2007: 41). “The most prominent characteristic of this [caizi jiaren] model is the idealization of the two lovers” (Song 2004: 20): the caizi 才子 [the scholar], the young man who possesses good looks with extraordinary literary talent, and the jiaren 佳人 [the beauty], the young lady who is blessed with physical beauty and contains gracious characters, purity, and virtue.

The Yu Jiaoli 玉嬌梨 (also known in the West as Iu-Kiao-Li: or, The Two Fair Cousins), a Chinese romance of long fiction to be translated into several Western languages, was known as one of the “three of the best known [caizi jiaren works],” sharing “many salient features of narrative in common, allowing certain generalisations on the formulaic nature of such works” (Starr 2007: 40). The romance told a romantic love story between a young man, Su Youbai 蘇友白 and two girls, Bai Hongyu 白紅玉, Bai Xuan’s daughter, and Lu Mengli 盧夢梨, Bai Xuan’s niece. The love story unfolded against a background of the monopolization of power by eunuch Wang Zhen during the Zhengtong Era 正統 (1436–1450) of the Ming dynasty of China, highlighting the talent and interest between a man and a girl as the emotional foundation for the marriage instead of the traditional perfect match between a young talented man and a pretty lady.

The Yu Jiaoli was perceived as “The Second Book of Genius” among the “Ten books of Genius” (Ten caizi jiaren Romance)¹ and “one of the best-known caizi jiaren novels [romance]” (Song 2004: 20). However, the reputation of the caizi jiaren works in the West, including Yu Jiaoli, far exceeded their reputation in China. They domestically “encountered a critical silence” on the one hand, “though for apparently more ‘objective’ aesthetic reasons, after the genre was dismissed for its lack of imagination” (Starr 2007: 40). On the other hand, their vitality has been redeveloped in the West when multiple translations have been passed on to the west.

The translations of the Yu Jiaoli gave it a second life in the West. Many famous Romantic writers, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918), drew their inspiration from it. It was first translated into French by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832), entitled IU-KIAO-LI ou Les deux cousins and published in 1826. One year later, an English translation of Abel-Rémusat’s French translation was published, entitled Iu-Kiao-Li: or, The Two Fair Cousins, by an anonymous translator. This English version was popular among English readers, but it was a product of indirect translation (a translation of a translation).

2. Indirect Translation (ITr) and the previous studies on the Yu jiaoli

Indirect Translation (ITr), also known as “double,” “mediated,” “second-hand,” or “a translation of a translation,” is “an understudied phenomenon, often criticised by scholars because of its greater distance to the original” (Kadiu 2016: 1). Shuttleworth & Cowie (1997: 76), in their Dictionary of Translation Studies, defined it as “the procedure whereby a text is not translated directly from an original ST, but via an intermediate translation in another language.”

It “is not considered as a practice that is different from direct translation and thus remains, as elsewhere, an under-researched, under-theorized area largely ignored in the rapidly evolving field of Translation Studies both as theory and practice” (Lakshmi, 2017: 77). ITr includes at least three languages, i.e., the source language (SL), the mediating language (ML), and the target language (TL), none of which could be neglected in translation studies. Till 1827, the text of Yu jiaoli not only traveled from one geographical ubication (China) to another (England) but transited via one more geographical locality (France). Thus, when studying the English translation of Yu jiaoli (TL), the original text in Chinese (SL) and the French translation (ML) have to be involved altogether. Unfortunately, the previous studies on the translations of the Yu jiaoli mainly focused on directly comparing the SL with its English translation (TL) without considering the French version by Abel-Rémusat (ML). As Lakshmi (2017: 77) argued, ITr could fulfill “not only in facilitating accessibility to texts that would otherwise remain inaccessible but also in fulfilling some function in the target context cannot be ignored by translation studies scholars.” Thus, neglecting the mediating translation will lead to confusion and incorrect conclusions on both theoretical and practical levels.

For example, by directly comparing the English translation (1827) with the original Chinese Yu jiaoli, Zeng (2014: 106) believed that the first poem in the first chapter was only “translated partially, in which the last two sentences have been deleted instead of being translated,” because “according to the translator [Abel-Rémusat], ‘[t]he style of Chinese novels is however replete with the greatest difficulties … ’ (IU-KIAO-LI 1827: xxx)” (Zeng 2014: 106; translated from Chinese). However, in Abel-Rémusat’s French translation, the entire poem has been wholly kept and translated into French because Abel-Rémusat advocated faithfulness to the original text. The translator of the English version deleted the last two sentences of the poem from his/her translation for the sake of the amusement of English readers (see Appendices).

By revisiting the three versions of the Yu jiaoli (i.e., the original Chinese version, the 1826 French version directly translated from Chinese, and the 1827 English version indirectly translated from Chinese via the French version), this article will make the contrastive analysis of those three versions of Yu jiaoli by comparing the French version with the Chinese, and then the English version with the French version. This article will focus on answering the questions of: (1) what translating strategies the two translators intentionally or unintentionally applied, and (2) through the strategies, how these translators served to make their translations palatable to European readers. This article reminds the researchers of attaching importance to the studies on ITr and the process from the original text to the ITr.

3. The English translation practice against Abel-Rémusat’s views on translation

The early translations of the Chinese Classical works into Western languages were undertaken by missionaries, who were “essentially concerned about the more classical, more moral and more serious texts” (Pillet 2012: 209, translated from French). But since the eighteenth century, Europeans shifted their interests from translating Chinese Classical works to be highly praised by missionaries to Chinese Romances because they expected to “find in it some of those interesting and instructive stories which the studious avidity of our century has brought into vogue, and from which one likes to draw effortlessly the knowledge of the customs, traditions, the genius of peoples and the character of illustrious men” (Abel-Rémusat 1826: 1, translated from French). The caizi jiaren romances illustrated virtuousness and educated people’s lifestyles and love stories, greatly catering to the European readers’ interests, preferences and curiosity.

For reputation and glory, Thomas Percy first translated one of the caizi jiaren romances, Hao qiuzhuan, into English based on Wilkinson’s manuscript. Percy’s translation was successful and had been retranslated into many other languages later, but his translation deviated from the original. He “did not endeavor to pass a text from one language to another language, but to render in an acceptable English translation that is probably scholarly and laborious,” for the sake of making “a name for himself in the London literary community” (Postel 2011, translated from French). Percy’s English version was then faithfully translated into French and also achieved success, but unfortunately, “as Grimm in Correspondance littéraire 13 asserted, [it was] written moreover in an ‘awful French’” (Postel 2011, translated from French).

In reality, there had been a contest between Britain and France in business and trade with China, missionary activities, and sinology research; however, “France experienced a major crisis at the end of the 18th century, under the combined effect of the expulsion of the Jesuits from China and the Revolution,” as a result, “[t]he bond between France and China seemed on the verge of breaking” (Postel 2011, translated from French). Abel-Rémusat rebuilt the link between France and China at the beginning of the 19th century, which threatened the status of British Sinology. (Postel 2011, translated from French) Abel-Rémusat established Sinology as an academic discipline in Europe when he delivered his inaugural lecture at the College de Roi in Paris in 1815 (see Li & Hansen 2022: 344). He had a particular interest in Chinese Romance novels and expected to import them to Europe. “In fact, Abel-Rémusat’s French translation of the Yu jiao li [Yu jiaoli] has wielded tremendous influence in nineteenth-century Europe” (Bai 2018: 28) and has soon been translated into English.

Although geographically, linguistically, and culturally, France is farther from China than from England, and the differences between French and Chinese are also more significant than those between French and English, the French translation is closer to the Chinese original than the English translation is to the French translation. The previous studies have neglected this conclusion because the scholars usually compared the English translation with the Chinese texts in parallel, without examining the French translation. For example, Chen compared the English translation of Yu jiaoli with its Chinese original and concluded that:

[t]he Western translators and readers traditionally attached more importance to the authenticity rather than literariness of the Chinese literary works. As a result, the translators reinforced the influence of moral factors and religious standpoints on translation through deliberate misinterpretation. These factors not only gave impetus to the early spread of Chinese classical novels in the West but also enlightened us on how to tell a good story of China.

(Chen 2018: 206)

Concerning the translation strategies and views on translation, it is not accurate to generalize the identities of different translators as “the Western translators,” though Western-centrism prevailed in Europe. As the founder of academic sinology, the French translator, Abel-Rémusat was willing to follow, “the authenticity rather than literariness.” Although Abel-Rémusat had “noticed that [most of the people] would polish the writings of the Orientals, to substitute our [the Western] ideas for those which are peculiar to them, to replace bizarre thoughts by ingenious conceptions and extraordinary metaphors by pleasant images,” he wanted his translation “to be faithful,” rather than pretending to “give the work more merit than it had by itself, nor to write a more interesting version than the original” (Abel-Rémusat 1826: 58–59, translated from French).

His faithfulness was on the condition that his translation was “bearable” by the readers. Though he (Abel-Rémusat 1826: 55) realized that he should “spare the readers this trouble [the strange names] by reforming these strange pronunciations,” he only rendered two Chinese names more acceptable by the slight revision, such as substituting Lo for Lou (魯), Sse for Sou (蘇). Abel-Rémusat also deliberately obscured the names of the official positions because he believed that the Chinese imperial competitive examination was puzzling to Europeans. The complicated government systems and long and complex terms of the official positions in this book might seriously hinder the readers. For example, Abel-Rémusat simplified and translated the official position Jiake taichang zhengqing 甲科太常正卿 [Minister of Ceremonies selected from the Imperial Competitive Examination] to “une grande charge de magistrature [great judicial authorities]” (Abel-Rémusat 1826: 83).

Abel-Rémusat also applied the amplification method in translation by adding the cultural and background knowledge in the main texts or by the footnotes. For example, Abel-Rémusat adopted transliteration to translate the name of the city, Jinling 金陵, to “Kinling” throughout the book; still, he added a more modern name, Nanking (Nanjing 南京), to this city when he first mentioned it. As for the clause “王振弄權” [Wangzhen manipulated power for personal ends/played politics], Abel-Rémusat translated it to “C’était le temps où l’eunuque Wangtchin avait en quelque sorte usurpé l’autorité impériale [It was the time when the eunuch Wangzhen had somehow usurped imperial authority]” (Abel-Rémusat 1826: 83), with the addition of Wangzhen’s title, eunuque [eunuch], because in China, eunuchs sometimes participated in and interfered in the affairs of the state. But in most cases, Abel-Rémusat, as the translator chose to be invisible. Compared with Marc-Antoine Eidous (ca. 1724–1790), who translated Hau Kiou Choaan [Haoqiu zhuan] into French, having reached a reasonably high level but seeming to be straying from the original, Abel-Rémusat brought the translation tradition of faithfulness back to France by arguing that

ce qu’on nous demande, ce n’est pas de composer de jolis ouvrages français, mais de mettre en lumière ceux des nations de l’Orient tels qu’ils sont, avec leurs défauts et leurs agréments. En voulant les perfectionner, on ne fait que les travestir, et enchère chant à les rendre plus européens, on réussit seulement à faire qu’ils ne sont plus asiatiques.

(Abel-Rémusat 1826: 58–59)

what is asked of us is not to compose pretty French works, but to highlight those of the nations of the East as they are, with their faults and their charms. By wanting to perfect them, we are only disguising them. Trying to make them more European, we only succeed in making them no longer Asian.

(Abel-Rémusat 1826: 58–59, translated from French)

Abel-Rémusat took advantage of paratext under his view of faithfulness on translation. Apart from the numerous footnotes, the long preface seemed to be his oath of faithfulness to translation, and “the illustrations included with the translation made a forceful claim for the veracity of provenance” (Sieber 2013: 58). However, many mistranslations are made inadvertently under Abel-Rémusat’s principle of faithfulness. Chen (2018: 76; translated from Chinese) argued that “there were numerous examples of this deliberate mistranslation in the [English] translation” when comparing the English translation with the original Chinese, such as dongfang 洞房 [nuptial chamber/bridal chamber] in the English version being translated to “the apartment of the women,” and jiaozi 轎子 [palanquin/dooly/sedan (chair)] in the English version being translated to “the chair.” In fact, these mistranslations were not made by the English translator but by Abel-Rémusat who translated “dongfang” to “l’appartement des femmes,” and “jiaozi” to “les chaises.”

Although translating from French to English is far less complicated than translating from Chinese to French both culturally and linguistically, the anonymous translator of the English version (hereafter referred to as “Anon”) preferred literariness rather than authenticity. Compared with the translator of Hao Qiuzhuan, who in the preface was “at pains to foreground the visibility of a[n] [unknown] Chinese author²” (Sieber 2013: 60), Anon in the “Advertisement” and “Note” spared no effort to promote the reputation, prestige, and knowledge of Abel-Rémusat, the French translator. In order to improve the credibility of his translation, Anon praised Abel-Rémusat’s translation strategies which had been concluded in the French preface; as a result, he also retained Abel-Rémusat’s long preface, translated it into English attached in his English translation. He promised that:

we fully agree with its author [Abel-Rémusat], that the translation of a few of the best specimens of Chinese fiction, the object of which is a portraiture of native life and manners, will do more to make us intimately acquainted with that secluded people, than all the journals, or books of travels, which have ever been compiled.

(Iu-Kiao-Li 1827: vii)

Nevertheless, Anon’s English translation embodied the act of translator’s intervention, which broke Abel-Rémusat’s “scientific rigor triumphing in the work of translation” (“triomphe alors la rigueur scientifique dans le travail de traduction,” Postel 2013) when Abel-Rémusat translated the Yu jiaoli in 1826. First of all, the style of the text has been altered, compared with the French translation and the Chinese origin. As for the style, the Classic Chinese Novels were noted for their synthesis of various styles, especially for a large number of applications of poetry. Poems placed at the beginning, end, and middle of the chapters are very common in Ming-Qing novels.³ It has “even become the symbol of Chinese traditional serial novels⁴” (Wan 2022: 127; translated from Chinese) to place poems at the beginning of each chapter. In the Yu jiaoli, a couple of poems were regularly arranged for each chapter, such as, one seven-character octave⁵ in the beginning, a couple of verses in various forms in the middle, and one seven-character quatrain⁶ at the end.

When Abel-Rémusat translated the Yu jiaoli, he was meticulous in translating the poems though he found them rather hard to be translated. He knew clearly that the poems in the Yu jiaoli were of great importance, so he did his utmost to keep the original verse form and translate them literally. The poem at the beginning of each chapter of the Yu jiaoli usually hints at a certain ending of this chapter or this romance. In contrast, the poem in the end usually summarizes the plot of this chapter and serves as a comment on people or events or as a connecting link between the preceding and the following. However, based on Abel-Rémusat’s French translation, the English version broke the style that Abel-Rémusat put forth his best efforts to follow. For example, in the first chapter, Anon turned the seven-character octave at the beginning of the first chapter into a seven-character quatrain, deleting the last four lines of the poem (see Appendices) and he also deleted the poem at the end and one poem in the middle. Anon’s intentional deletion, on the one hand, might be due to his unfamiliarity with the Chinese language and Chinese works, which exposed the problems of indirect translation. Abel-Rémusat in his preface admitted that he could not understand many metaphors of the poems and could only translate them by speculation, so his translation may confuse Anon who even could not read the original Chinese version. In his preface, Abel-Rémusat took a poem that had been deleted by Anon in the middle of the first chapter as an example to illustrate his confusion about the poem and argued that:

[l]a langue poétique des Chinois est véritablement intraduisible, on pourrait peut-être ajouter qu’elle est souvent inintelligible. Les métaphores les plus incohérentes et les figures les plus hardies y sont prodiguées avec une incroyable profusion. Et comme nous sommes privés en Europe des secours qui seraient indispensables pour déchiffrer ces compositions énigmatiques, nous nous trouvons réduits à une sorte d’opération conjecturale dont le succès n’est jamais parfaitement démontré.

(Abel-Rémusat 1826: 63)

[t]he poetical language of China is, in fact, untranslatable, and often, indeed, unintelligible. Metaphors the most incoherent, and figures of the boldest description, are lavished with inconceivable profusion; and as we possess not in Europe the assistance which is indispensable to decipher such enigmatical flights, we can frequently proceed by conjecture alone.

(Iu-Kiao-Li 1827: xxxi)

Abel-Rémusat did not add many footnotes to explain the allusions or metonymy when he translated the poems, such as Shi 詩 [The Book of Songs], Zheng Wei 鄭衛 [Zheng and Wei countries in Zhou Dynasty], Chunqiu 春秋 [Spring and Autumn Annals] and Ziyun 子雲 [person’s name] in the last four lines of the poem at the beginning of the first chapter, which Anon had deleted. On the other hand, the reason why Anon intentionally deleted the lines of the poems or the whole poems might be that he intended to render the Chinese xiaoshuo 小說 [Chinese novel/fiction/story/romance] more stylistically similar to the European novel.

As for the multiple paratexts that Abel-Rémusat added, Anon made many changes, embodying the act of the translator’s intervention. He deleted the illustration entitled “les hirondelles” and inserted his “Advertisement” and “Notes” instead. He deleted and modified a large number of footnotes added by Abel-Rémusat. For example, Anon only kept 8 footnotes among the 20 footnotes Abel-Rémusat added in the first chapter to explain the Chinese officials, names, history, and other cultural knowledge, and among the 8 footnotes, half were abridged and altered. Due to the unfamiliarity with the Chinese cultural background, Anon de-familiarized, simplified and even symbolized these terms by deleting the footnotes that could explain the terms to reduce the unfavorable reading impression of European readers. Such strategies of simplification were also adopted within the main text. These are all ways to make “a text in the higher literary style, and a commentary in a more diffuse and popular phraseology, calculated for the masses” praised by the European readers (Davis 1865: 66).

4. Conclusion

There are two separate translation processes involved in indirect translation, especially when the indirect translator does not understand the original text. By comparing the Yu jiaoli in the original with the French and English translations, we conclude that the two translators had quite different attitudes toward translation. First, according to the paratext before the main text, Abel-Rémusat’s 82-page preface in French seemed to be the guideline and his manifesto for his views and strategies on translating the Eastern national culture and works into the West. It represented his scholarly rigorous and responsible attitudes in the study of sinology – authenticity over literariness. In contrast, though Anon entirely kept Abel-Rémusat’s preface by translating it into English with minor revisions and emphasized his identification with Abel-Rémusat in the “Advertisement,” Anon’s literariness over faithfulness can be seen everywhere in his translation. Anon did not prepare a preface for his translation, nor did he comment or interpret his translation strategies, but simply wrote a short “Advertisement” and a “Note,” among which the commercial “Advertisement” aimed to promote Abel-Rémusat’s academic status to achieve the purpose of publicity, while the “Note” only briefly introduced the ins and outs of the novel Yu jiaoli to prove its authenticity.

The difference between Anon’s English translation practice and Abel-Rémusat’s views on translation was subject to the requirements of the times. Britain and France were rivals in business and sinology, but in the Anglo-French competition, “The French have the reputation of dominating the intellectual trade between China and Europe while England would be content with the trade at all” (Postel 2011, translated from French). As for France, Abel-Rémusat at the beginning of the nineteenth century established academic sinology in Europe, as well as reestablished the nearly fractured ties between China and France. Driven by knowledge and academic research, Abel-Rémusat aimed to let Europeans understand Chinese novels by bringing the novels into the style of that nation, rather than by referring to the style of European novels. As for England, due to the practical necessity that “English East India Company wanted to know Chinese well enough to respond to the commercial challenges of the English nation with China” (Postel 2011, translated from French), Anon’s translating and publishing activities were with a stronger commercial purpose. This was similar to what happened in translating Haoqiu zhuan when Guillard d’Arcy who was “more respectful of the letter of the original text” translated Haoqiu zhuan into French in 1842 partially based on John Francis Davis (1795–1890)’s simplified English version, Guillard “meticulously followed the Chinese in order not to weigh down his translation” (Postel 2011, translated from French).

Anon’s translation was successful at that time because it endeavored to consolidate British Sinology to some extent, satisfied commercial profitability, provided the companies and government with quick and easy-to-read knowledge for British overseas expansion, catered to the British curiosity, and pleased the Europeans’ pursuit of “novelty.” Through the analysis, we conclude that Anon’s mistranslations, abridgment, and deletions in his translation involved intentional interference as well as unintentional behavior. His intentional alterations were related to the above purposes, but his unintentional mistranslations were largely caused by his unfamiliarity with the Chinese language and Chinese culture, which was also the drawback of indirect translation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to the two external anonymous referees for their close reading and invaluable comments, which greatly improved this manuscript. I owe thanks to Annette Skovsted Hansen and Stig Thøgersen from the Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University, for alerting me to the Lundbæk collection at Aarhus University. I also owe thanks to Aarhus University for hosting me and offering me the access to the Lundbæk collection which inspired me to undertake this research. A special thanks also to the editors for their initial interest in the article and guidance through to publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the 2022 Guizhou Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Foundation Special Project (贵州省2022年度哲学社会科学规划国学单列课题) [22GZGX22].

Notes

1. Shi caizi shu 十才子書 [Ten books of Genius], the top ten “scholar-beauty” romances, includes Sanguo yanyi 三國演義, Haoqiu zhuan 好逑傳, Yu jiaoli 玉嬌梨, Pingshan lengyan 平山冷燕, Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳, Xixiang ji 西廂記, Pipa ji 琵琶記, Huajian ji 花箋記, Zhuogui zhuan 捉鬼傳, and Zhuchun yuan 駐春園.

2. Most of the early caizi jiaren novel was published under a pseudonym, in which Hao Qiuzhuan was under the “mysterious Master of Proper Confucian Teachings (Mingjiao zhongren 名教中人)” (Sieber 2013: 60). The author and date of composition of Yu jiaoli are also unknown, but it was believed to be composed during late Ming and early Qing and was ascribed to a pen name, Yi Qiu Sanren 荑秋散人.

3. Ming-Qing novels (Mingqing xiaoshuo 明清小說) refer to the novels, fictions or romances produced during Ming and Qing Dynasties.

4. Chinese traditional serial novel refers to the Zhanghuiti xiaoshuo 章回体小说 [type of traditional Chinese novel with captions for each chapter].

5. The seven-character octave is one of the most representative forms of Classical Chinese poetry, composed of eight lines, with seven characters in each line.

6. The seven-character quatrain (also known as the Quatrain of Seven Steps) is one of the most representative forms of Classical Chinese poetry, composed of four lines, with seven characters in each line.

7. 1) Di’an Shanren 荻岸山人, Yu jiaoli 玉嬌梨 (The Two Fair Cousins). Haerbin: Heilongjiang meishu chubanshe 哈爾濱: 黑龍江美術出版社 [Harbin: Hei Longjiang Art Publishing House]. 2014; and 2) Di’an Shanren 荻岸山人, Xiuxiang disan caizi shu 繡像第三才子書 [The Third Illstrated Book of Genius], Foshan: Zhenxian tang, 1732. Access via https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wXVPAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=fals.

Appendices:

The poem at the beginning of the first chapter in the three versions

1. Chinese original⁷

六經原本在人心，笑駡皆文仔細尋。

天地戲場觀莫矮，古今聚訟眼須深。

詩存鄭衛非無意，亂著春秋豈是淫。

更有子雲千載後，生生死死謝知音。

2. French translation by Abel-Rémusat (1826)

C’est le cœur humain qui est le fondement de nos livres classiques.

Railleries, injures, le style embellit tout.

Le monde est un vaste théâtre, où se jolie une longue comédie,

Maintenant comme jadis, nos débats en sont le spectacle.

Ce n’est pas pour rien que les royaumes de Tching et de Wei revivent dans les Odes:

Les désordres racontés par Confucius pourraient-ils se reproduire?

Il y a des Tseu-Yun, qui vivent encore après mille années

Et qui doivent à l’harmonie les succès de leur vie, et la gloire dont ils jouissent après leur mort.

3. English translation by Anon (1827)

The human heart is the great fountain from which our classic works are drawn. Their satires and invectives owe everything to the charms of style. The world is the great stage of one long drama, and our contentions make up the scenes thereof.