'The three concepts mentioned in the title of this volume imply the contact between two or more literary phenomena; they are based on similarities that are related to a form of ‘travelling’ and imitation or adaptation of entire texts, genres, forms or contents. Transfer comprises all sorts of ‘travelling’, with translation as a major instrument of transferring literature across linguistic and cultural barriers. Transfer aims at the process of communication, starting with the source product and its cultural context and then highlighting the mediation by certain agents and institutions to end up with inclusion in the target culture. Reception lays its focus on the receiving culture, especially on critcism, reading, and interpretation. Translation, therefore, forms a major factor in reception with the general aim of reception studies being to reveal the wide spectrum of interpretations each text offers. Moreover, translations are the prime instrument in the distribution of literature across linguistic and cultural borders; thus, they pave the way for gaining prestige in the world of literature. The thirty-eight papers included in this volume and dedicated to research in this area were previously read at the ICLA conference 2016 in Vienna. They are ample proof that the field remains at the center of interest in Comparative Literature.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Chinese poetic tradition presents such a self-centred system that it seems almost impossible to imagine a bilingual poet working with two languages, one of which is Chinese. It is highly significant to explore what changes in this situation (if any) one can observe in the realm of contemporary Chinese poetry with its openness to foreign influences and important shifts in the poet’s persona. The first part of this exploration is an analysis of poets’ critical and theoretical writing that elaborates themes of poetic language and cultural identity. These are further examined with the help of a series of interviews with poets representing different faces of multiethnic Chinese society. The result shows discrepancies between the projected identity of a globalized “Chinese poet” and the vision of a bilingual poetas one rooted in the culture of minorities. The second part is dedicated to a case study of the Australian-Chinese poet Ouyang Yu, who represents a unique case of Chinese–English bilingualism. Ouyang Yu uses several strategies for constructing his multicultural identity, maintaining an illusion that it is the reader and not the author who is an alien in need of the poet to guide him through an unfamiliar linguistic landscape.'
Source: Abstract.
