Reading Chinese Literature: Theory and Criticism

Taught entirely in Chinese in the Australian context, this course trains students in critical analysis and discussion of the most famous classical Chinese novel Hongloumeng and its brilliant English translation The Story of the Stone by David Hawkes and John Minford. Through minute textual analysis this course will explore this Chinese literary classic and its translation from an interdisciplinary perspective, aiming at training students to become more competent bilingual readers. The goal of the course is to engage with literary texts and critical thinking to develop independent research and academic writing skills, meanwhile emphasizing the idea of translation as a dialogue between the original and the translated text, between the translator and his former self, and a learning process both for the translator and the reader of his translation.