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.

"This thesis studies a Chinese rendition of Aesop’s Fables in nineteenth century China. Yishi Yuyan, known in English as Esop’s Fables: written in Chinese by the Learned Mun Mooy Seen-Shang, and compiled in their present form (with a free and a literal translation) by his pupil Sloth, was published amid the Opium War in 1840. The work, as stated in the preface, was meant to be a primer for English learners of Chinese, but it acquired at the same time a wide local readership despite being censored by the Chinese authority soon after publication and listed in the Index Expurgatorius. Firmly shunning the sterile dichotomist notion of ‘linguistic versus cultural translation’, the present study will explore more comprehensively the rendition as a converse between two distinct cultures in their early encounter by comparative textual analyses and a probe into the cultural intricacies behind the practice of translation. It will establish that the amateurish collaboration between the ‘foreign devil’ and his ‘Chinese helper’, as it happened so often then, was the best means available toward some salubrious degree of intercultural understanding, with their respective ‘horizons’ inevitably predetermining the composition of the work. The purpose, and hence the core value of this thesis, is to exposit the complexity of perception and reception of the self and the other by dissimilar cultures as refracted in the translation."

"The following fables were selected indiscriminately from Esop--Phedrus--Ananius [i.e. Avianus]--Barlandus &c. &c. &c., but all published under the general name ... of Esop's fables. These were delivered orally at different times, in Mandarin Chinese, by the compiler [Robert Thom] to his native teacher; who being a good penman, found little difficulty in writing them off, in the simple easy style in which they are composed."--Preface, p. [2].
Chinese title at head of t.p.
English translations, Chinese text and transliteration in parallel columns.
"The following fables were selected indiscriminately from Esop--Phedrus--Ananius [i.e. Avianus]--Barlandus &c. &c. &c., but all published under the general name ... of Esop's fables. These were delivered orally at different times, in Mandarin Chinese, by the compiler [Robert Thom] to his native teacher; who being a good penman, found little difficulty in writing them off, in the simple easy style in which they are composed."--Preface, p. [2].

Online:
Internet Archive.
Hathi Trust.
Local access dig.pdf. [EsopsFables (1840).pdf]