“Men control our vaginas; the state controls our wombs”. Sheng Keyi’s Novel The Womb (Zigong) and the representation of the female reproductive body

In this paper I describe the work of a Chinese female writer who tackles the subject of reproductive freedom in a rather bold and unconventional way, by questioning traditional and political Chinese views on reproduction and motherhood and narrating both physical and psychological abuses perpetrated on women from a strong female perspective. In her latest trilogy The Womb (Zigong 子宫, 2019), Sheng Keyi (b. 1973) describes the life and marriage of three generations of women in contemporary China, touching upon all kinds of issues such as sexual abstinence, contraception, birth control surgery and pregnancy. Their whole existence is regulated by the use and abuse of their body and the way both family tradition and state policy on reproduction affect their lives, with different consequences and problems depending on whether they live in an urban or rural context. The Womb has been defined an “investigation novel on women’s reproduction” (Lu 2019), a novel which “reveals the physical and spiritual injuries inflicted on women by birth control surgery” (Ma 2019, 121). What is most interesting in this novel is the way the author unfolds a counter-history of female reproduction within the macro-history of the country. As I will show in my paper, Sheng Keyi’s cold and graphic descriptions reveal an uncommon sensitivity and a compelling use of literature as a tool for empowering women – in particular voiceless peasants –, fostering their agency in reproductive matters

Strategie testuali e strategie traduttive in Kuangren riji (Diario di un pazzo, 1918) di Lu Xun

The essay is based on a text-oriented and discourse-oriented reading of the most famous short story of Lu Xun (1881-1936). The aim is to explore and suggest more challenging strategies for its translation, according to recent linguistic and translation theories

Another type of “old tales retold”. Translation and self-translation, intertextuality and self-intertextuality in Zhang Ailing’s works

This papers deals with Zhang Ailing’s (1920-1995) posthumous novel, Xiao tuanyuan 小团圆 (Little reunions), written in the 70s of last century but completed just before her death, and finally published only in 2009, which is an example of the continuous manipulation of the same narrative materials used in previous works, and re-presented here through a politics of self-translation and self-intertextuality. In translating this novel one is confronted with a complex “mosaic of quotations” as Kristeva says, and self-quotations, and is dragged into a forest of meanings derived from the juxtaposition of a variety of external “voices” that mix up with the internal voice of the author. This Bachtinian or babelian quality of the novel, in other words its pluri- and interdiscursivity, challenges the translator, who is called not only to reconstruct the original sources of the allusions, but is also caught between the need of disambiguation and the respect of the intertextual connections implied by the text, he/she has also to cope with the deliberate narrative fragmentation adopted by Zhang

La place de la littérature chinoise et le rôle de la traduction à l’époque de la globalisation. Un regard aux théories chinoises courantes.

The book in its three sections presents and compares a range of different phenomena of transculturation and globalisation in the field of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and its relation to Western and world literature. The first section is devoted to the theories and methodology of comparative literature and translation, and their multifold role in facing the new wave of "world literature". In the second section, Chinese literary texts and genres (from poetry to sci-fi and web literature) are scrutinised through the analysis of some case studies. The third and last section explores the interplay between Chinese and European literature, taking into account the reception and translation of some literary works in China as well as in Italy and France

The Tradition of Telling and the Desire of Showing in Ge Fei’s ‘Fictional Minds’

This paper examines Ge Fei 格非’s attempt to reconcile the inner world oh his characters and the outward reality in his in his recent trilogy, Renmian taohua 人面桃花 (Peach Blossom-beauty, 2004), Shanhe ru meng 山河入梦 (Mountains and Rivers Fall Asleep, 2007) and Chunjin jiangnan 春尽江南 (End of Spring in Jiangnan, 2011). Since his novel, Diren 敌人 (The Enemy, 1991), Ge Fei has focussed on the individual search to negotiate between his/her own subjectivity and the objective world around. Pesaro tries to show how the author, in depicting history and the reality as perceived by these fictional centres of consciousness, tends to gradually move from an indirect approach to a direct one. Chen Zhongyi 陈众议 (2012) points out the inner contradiction of Ge Fei’s style, which he defines as ‘classical’ (gudian 古典) and ‘avant-garde’ (xianfeng 先锋) at the same time, actually, as Pesaro points out, a sophisticated merging of both styles rather than a contradiction, ‘the sublimation of some modernist techniques within a more traditional, essentially Chinese, narrative frame.’ Ge Fei choses to narrate the human mind in its complexity and in its constant interaction with the outer world by combining traditional subjectivity and implicitness with modern devices such as stream of consciousness, the descriptions of actions and objects, and the use of poetry to represent emotions and mental activities. Thus he creates a completely new and independent narrative style, achieving both continuity and discontinuity with Chinese tradition

Yu Hua

The text is a short presentation of Yu Hua's biography with a critical comment on his main works and his literary style

"Feishiyi de ci 非诗意的词, la parole peu poétique : réflexions sur la traduction de Mu Dan (1918-1977)"

Mu Dan 穆旦 (1918-1977) più noto in Cina come Zha Liangzheng, traduttore di Puskin e Byron, ridotto al silenzio durante il maoismo, è autore di un centinaio di poesie composte negli anni Quaranta e in piccola parte nel 1976-1977 (dopo la riabilitazione). Con la sua creazione e le sue traduzioni poetiche ha introdotto nella letteratura cinese il concetto di “io frammentato” (canque de wo), e una nuova visione della poesia, fondata non sulla parola poetica bensì sulla musicalità del ritmo e su di una sintassi del tutto moderna: una poesia fatta non di sentimenti ma di cose. Il carattere frammentario e aspro di questo linguaggio anticonformista pone le maggiori sfide al traduttore delle sue opere: come riprodurre il suo stile ibrido, polisillabico e contorto? Il confronto con la poesia “pietrosa” di Montale può essere un utile riferimento