Subterranean translation: The absent presence of Shen Congwen in K.M. Panikkar’s “Modern Chinese Stories”
Subterranean translation: The absent presence of Shen Congwen in K.M. Panikkar’s “Modern Chinese Stories”

Summary/Abstract: This paper performs a critical reading of the counter-intuitive inclusion of Zhang Zhaohe, a minor writer best known as the wife of the great novelist Shen Congwen, in Modern Chinese Stories, an English anthology compiled by Indian diplomat K.M. Panikkar. Proposing the concept of “subterranean translation”, this paper shows how the explicit translation of Zhang’ s story functioned as an implicit inclusion of Shen, when he was denied legitimacy by the state’s literary authorities due to his non-compliance. Shen was present in the anthology not through direct translation of his works, but through a strong intertextuality between his real-life predicament and the protagonist’s dilemma in Zhang’ s story.

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