"The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia"

Haun Saussy, University Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago

Debates on the canon, multiculturalism, and world literature often take Eurocentrism as the target of their critique. But literature is a universe with many centers, and one of them is China. The Making of Barbarians offers an account of world literature in which China, as center, produces its own margins. This book investigates the meanings of literary translation, adaptation, and appropriation on the boundaries of China long before it came into sustained contact with the West. Professor Saussy focuses on the period before 1850, when the translation of foreign works into Chinese was rare because Chinese literary tradition overshadowed those around it. This publication looks closely at literary works that were translated into Chinese from foreign languages or resulted from contact with alien peoples. It explores why translation was such an undervalued practice in premodern China, and how this vast and prestigious culture dealt with those outside it before a new group of foreigners—Europeans—appeared on the horizon.