Author ｜
Wen-dong Cui
Abstract ｜
It is well known among scholars that the Meiji political novels played a pivotal role in inspiring Liang Qichao’s Revolution in Fiction. However, to date scholars have failed to reveal the influence of political novels on Liang Qichao’s translated biographies of Western heroes. This paper attempts to explore how Liang Qichao appropriates the narrative structure and the character portrayal of two Meiji political novels, Keikoku Bidan (Inspiring Tales of Statesmanship) and Kajin no Kigu (On Unexpected Encounters with Beauties) in his translated biography Yidali Jianguo Sanjiezhuan (Biography of Three Makers of Italy). In terms of the narrative structure, Liang Qichao is inspired by the framework of Chinese historical romance adopted by Keikoku Bidan. In terms of the character portrayal, the image of Garibaldi as xia 俠 (Chinese knight-errant) in Kajin no Kigu shapes Liang Qichao’s writings. As both historical romance and the tradition of xia are originally Chinese cultural heritage, it suffices to say that through the intermediate of the Meiji political novels, Liang succeeds in creating a new mode of biographical writing by assimilating the transformed tradition in a trans-cultural and trans-generic manner.
keywords ｜
Liang Qichao, Yidali Jianguo Sanjiezhuan, Meiji political novels, Keikoku Bidan, Kajin no Kigu