Literary metamorphosis: a corpus-assisted approach to characterisation in The Rouge of the North and “The Golden Cangue”

Xinyu Shi and Libo Huang ()
Additional contact information
Xinyu Shi: Xi’an International Studies University
Libo Huang: Xi’an International Studies University

Palgrave Communications, 2024, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: Abstract Based on her Chinese story “Jinsuo Ji”, the renowned bilingual writer Eileen Chang produced two English versions, i.e. The Rouge of the North and “The Golden Cangue”. The basic difference between the two English versions lies in that The Rouge of the North is more of a rewriting, while “The Golden Cangue” is a direct translation. An interesting issue emerges as to how characters are constructed in those two inter-related texts. This study, taking direct speech as an indicator of character portrayal, adopts a corpus-assisted approach to characterisation in the two texts. The study elaborates on the functions fulfilled by direct speech in constructing characters and carries out a comparative analysis of characterisation in the two texts. The results show that, due to distinctive uses of direct speech, there are subtle yet definite differences between The Rouge of the North and “The Golden Cangue” in shaping characters’ verbal prominence, establishing characters’ verbal interactional relationships, and presenting the protagonists’ linguistic features. Devoted to the issue of characterisation in literary metamorphosis, the study demonstrates the multiple functions performed by direct speech in character portrayal and has some implications for improving corpus methods to examine the complexities of characterisation.

Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-024-03959-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:11:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-024-03959-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-024-03959-6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().