Abstract: Aesop’s fables, the first western literary works transmitted to China, opened up the field of translations in China in the nineteenth century. But there had been more than one transmission, and the process by which the Chinese absorbed Aesop was long and complicated. This dissertation explores when and how the transmissions of Aesop’s fables into China took place in history and how these fables influenced Chinese writing of yuyan, an analogous genre in Chinese literature. It attempts to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the history of the transmissions and analyses of examples that are relatively representative in respect to the transformation of the genre in the Chinese milieu. In order to provide both theoretical and empirical bases for this endeavor, I have divided the dissertation into three parts. The first part gives definitions of the relevant genres and origins of the fable, or similar genres, in the West, India, and China. At the early stage, the western tradition of using fables in education and preaching indirectly paved the way for their transmission to China. The second part is devoted to the transmissions of Aesop’s fables to China in the pre-modern eras. Given archeologists’ discoveries of the manuscripts of the Aesopic fables found in the Western Regions of China in the early twentieth century, one chapter deals with the obscure transmission that occurred no later than the sixth century and tries to clarify the influence of Manichaeism in the transmission dated by archaeologists to the eighth or ninth century. The other chapter of part two discusses the Jesuits’ adaptation and use of Aesop’s fables in their Chinese sermonic works in the seventeenth century. The third part considers the transformation of the genre of the fable after its encounter with the Chinese yuyan. In the Chinese author Li Shixiong’s work, we get a glimpse of an early combination of the two genres in terms of literary techniques. Later, the Chinese translations of Aesop’s fables in the nineteenth century show that more elements from Chinese literary traditions were mixed in the fables. The process reveals the challenge that the fable brought to the Chinese literary sphere. The traditional Chinese concept that the truth had to be represented by historicized narration faced the challenge of a genre known for its fictitious story picturing a truth that was not necessarily grounded in a historical event.

ABSTRACT: TRANS-TEXTUAL DIALOGUE IN THE JESUIT MISSIONARY INTRA-LINGUAL TRANSLATION OF THE YIJING / Sophie Ling-chia Wei, Victor H. Mair

In Early Qing Dynasty, the Jesuit Figurists found the Yijing as their precious treasure and treated it as the bridge linking the gap between Christianity and Chinese civilization. The Yijing was viewed as preserving relics of this pure true religion. They tried to find Prisca theologia (ancient theology) in the Chinese classics, especially in the Yijing (the Book of Changes). This group of Jesuit Figurists viewed the Yijing as a prophetic book, which contained some of the mysteries of Christianity and so started their trans-textual dialogue with the ancient texts and the auxiliary commentaries of the Yijing. What distinguishes this dissertation from other academic research about the Jesuit Figurists is its focus on the Jesuit Figurists' Chinese works on the Yijing. Between 1710 and 1712, Bouvet wrote eight works about the Yijing in Chinese. This dissertation aims to discover the missing piece in the puzzle and make the whole research on the Jesuit Figurists' works of the Yijing more complete.
Though their endeavors on the re-interpretation of the Yijing and their proselytization failed to promote Catholicism as a national religion in China because the Kangxi Emperor and Chinese literati all had their own agenda, their dialogue with the Yijing to build the esoteric connection and parallels with Christianity reveals more and more valuable findings. The same mystical elements, such as numbers, images, characters in both the Western tradition of biblical hermeneutics, and the charts and hexagrams of Yijing, become tokens of exchange and disclose evidence of their deliberate interpretation. Each page of their Chinese handwritten manuscript should not be left unnoticed because they invite us to embark on a new journey to uncover their embedded mystic theological interpretation in their trans-textual dialogue in the intra-lingual translation of the Book of Changes.

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"... an interdisciplinary approach, studying eight Jesuit renderings of Western writings into Chinese in late-Ming and sheds new light on the development of missionary translation in the Chinese context. The Jesuit translators studied include Matteo Ricci, Nicolo Longobardo, Alfonso Vagnone, Giulio Aleni, Emmanuel Diaz, etc..."
Includes bibliographical references (p. [445]-496) and index.

第一章. 導論：翻譯的旅行與行旅的翻譯.
第二章. 聖歌與聖諦：利瑪竇譯《西琴曲意八章》
第三章. 翻譯 • 政治 • 教爭：龍華民譯《聖若撒法始末》
第四章. 太上忘情：湯若望與王徵譯《崇一堂日記隨筆》
第五章. 三面瑪利亞：高一志譯《聖母行實》
第六章. 聖人 • 魔鬼 • 懺悔：高一志譯《天主聖教聖人行實》
第七章. 著書多格言：高一志譯《譬學》
第八章. 中譯第一首「英」詩：艾儒略譯《聖夢歌》
第九章. 瘳心之藥，靈病之神劑：陽瑪諾譯《輕世金書》
第十章. 結論：明末翻譯與清末文學新知的建構.