Description
Book SynopsisExperimental Chinese Literature is the first theoretical account of material poetics from the dual perspectives of translation and technology. Focusing on a range of works by contemporary Chinese authors including Hsia Yü, Chen Li, and Xu Bing, Tong King Lee explores how experimental writers engage their readers in multimodal reading experiences by turning translation into a method and by exploiting various technologies. The key innovation of this book rests with its conceptualisation of translation and technology as spectrums that interact in different ways to create sensuous, embodied texts. Drawing on a broad range of fields such as literary criticism, multimodal studies, and translation, Tong King Lee advances the notion of the translational text, which features transculturality and intersemioticity in its production and reception.
Trade Review"A clear and wideranging exposition of these issues in the Chinese-language context, Lee's book is a welcome change and addition to the more usual focus on the artistic practices of experimental writers and text-based artists in Europe and North America." -Adam Jaworski, The University of Hong Kong, in Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 50, Iss. 1.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Tables and Figures Chapter 1 Central Issues Experimental Literature and its Modes of Materiality Multimodality and Intersemioticity Translation and the Translational Technology Chapter Outline Chapter 2 Machine Translation and Hsia Yü's Poetics of Deconstruction Translation and Deconstruction Dichotomies Revisited Pink Noise: Mode of Writing Deconstructing Authorship Romancing the Machine Poet Transparent Meanings: Multimodality and Materiality The Texts: Literary Meaning and its Discontents Disjuncture and Divergence Concretising Images Ungrammaticality: Fetishism with the Word Proliferating Différance: Pink Noise in Multiple MT (Ir)reconciling Text and Machine The Text-Machine as Monster The ‘Ish-ness’ of Language Chapter 3 The Material Poetics of Chen Li: Translation and Technology The Translingual Sign as Inscription Technology Intermediality: The Printed Text and its Digital ‘Translation’ Interlinguality: Writing Through Translation Intersemioticity: Creative Transpositions Engendering a Material Poetics through Translation and Technology Chapter 4 Visuality and Translation in Literary Art: Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky and A Book from the Ground The Imagetext in Deconstructed Chinese Characters: A Book from the Sky Icon-Language in Deverbalised Communication: A Book from the Ground Imagetext: Image-In-Text to Image-As-Text Chapter 5 The Translational: Intersemioticity and Transculturality Case Examples Text Garden Read, Art Evil/Exorcised Translation as Method in Literary Art Chapter 6 On Chineseness and the Trope of Translation in Experimental Literature Bibliography
