Gaskell in China: A History of Translation and Critical Reception

This essay traces chronologically Elizabeth Gaskell’s reception in mainland China from 1916 to the present day. It focuses on the ways in which Chinese translations and studies of Gaskell are governed by China’s changing socio-political and cultural concerns. The translation of Gaskell was motivated by cultural reasons in Republican China and by political ones in Maoist China. In the former period, Gaskell’s work was considered useful for the creation of a new, modern Chinese literature, while in the latter period, it was seen as conducive to China’s socialist revolution and education. In the post-Mao era, cultural and commercial considerations have come to dominate Gaskell translation. Serious Chinese Gaskell scholarship emerged as part of the critical effort to reaffirm the historical significance of nineteenth-century European realism in the late 1970s. Since then, Chinese criticism of Gaskell has developed from an initial period dominated by Marxist critical approaches through a formative period marked by feminist approaches to a flourishing period featuring diverse critical approaches. The study of Chinese Gaskell would contribute to the global awareness of foreign Gaskells.