Author ｜
Shaw-yu Pan
Abstract ｜
Comparing to the glorious tradition of lyrical poems and essays in ancient China, the quantity and quality of writings of love letter appear to be much less impressive. However, the situation changed severely since the early Republican period. The genre of love letter was not only vitalized, the amount of writings also increased rapidly. Moreover, publishing love letters became fashionable after the May Fourth, and writing love letters was an important practice of romantic love for young intellectuals. The literary translations were arguably taken as examples in this dramatic change. In order to investigate the transformation of traditional love letters in the modern era, this paper first analyzes how the translators of European sentimental novels and famous love letters adopted Chinese literary tradition, created phrases to imply intimacy and introduced Western ideas of love and marriage to Chinese readers. It then explores the “love letter fever” from 1910s to 1930s, and discusses how the strategies and legacies of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School, and the May Fourth writers, which differ drastically from the other, influenced the writing practice of love letters and enriched the craft of lyricism with complexity and diversity.
keywords ｜
love letter, impersonation, literary translation in the late Qing and early Republican periods, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School, May Fourth writers