Translation and Proselytization: James Legge’s Novelizations of Biblical Narratives
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James Legge(1815~1897), best known for his translations of the Chinese Confucian and Daoist classics, spent thirty years as a missionary at Malacca and Hong Kong before assuming the first professorship of Chinese at Oxford. Some of his lesser-known works published in Hong Kong include two “brief accounts”(jilüe 紀畧) of the biblical stories of Joseph(Yuese jilüe, 1852) and Abraham(Yabolahan jilüe, 1857), which rewrite the original narratives in the style of Chinese fiction. Ostensibly meant to broaden scripture’s appeal to Chinese readers, Legge’s “novelizations” nevertheless hew so closely to the biblical text that they are largely translations, albeit with some additions and omissions. This paper analyzes these two works in the context of Protestant missionary debates in the mid- to late nineteenth century on how to proselytize the Chinese. It shows how the works are written to appeal to both learned and popular audiences, and how they extract the biblical stories from their original narrative arcs in order to underscore their socio-ethical teachings while downplaying their theological implications.
Abstract
James Legge(1815~1897), best known for his translations of the Chinese Confucian and Daoist classics, spent thirty years as a missionary at Malacca and Hong Kong before assuming the first professorship of Chinese at Oxford. Some of his lesser-known works published in Hong Kong include two “brief accounts”(jilüe 紀畧) of the biblical stories of Joseph(Yuese jilüe, 1852) and Abraham(Yabolahan jilüe, 1857), which rewrite the original narratives in the style of Chinese fiction. Ostensibly meant to broaden scripture’s appeal to Chinese readers, Legge’s “novelizations” nevertheless hew so closely to the biblical text that they are largely translations, albeit with some additions and omissions. This paper analyzes these two works in the context of Protestant missionary debates in the mid- to late nineteenth century on how to proselytize the Chinese. It shows how the works are written to appeal to both learned and popular audiences, and how they extract the biblical stories from their original narrative arcs in order to underscore their socio-ethical teachings while downplaying their theological implications.
참고문헌 (26)
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