Abstract
“There are fifty-four cities on the island, all large and well built, and with the same language, custom, institutions and laws.”1 Thus Thomas More envisioned his ideal commonwealth in his early sixteenth-century work Utopia (1516). In More’s imagination, all Utopians speak one language, the same language used in all fifty-four cities and everywhere on the island. Moreover, those sites that generate linguistic differentiation in the real world seem to only create similarity in More’s Utopia. For instance, while in the real-world people in rural areas and those in the city speak distinct varieties of language, in More’s Utopia it was a totally different story:
[Utopians] have built houses all over the countryside, well designed and furnished with farm equipment. These houses are inhabited by citizens who come to the country by turns to dwell in them … Every year, twenty from each household move back to the city, after completing a two-year turn in the country. In their place, twenty others are sent out from town.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Thomas More, Utopia, trans. H.V.S. Ogden (Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1949), 29.
Kang Youwei, Ta Tung Shu: The One-World Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei, trans. Laurence G. Thompson (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1958), 99.
Gerard Wegemer, “The City of God in Thomas More’s Utopia,” Renascence 44 (Winter 1992): 115–135;.
Zhang Longxi, Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005) 167–173.
See Patrick Hanan, Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (New York: University of Columbia Press, 2004), 76.
Charles Ferguson, “Diglossia,” Word 15 (1959): 325–40.
The appropriations are in two aspects. First, Ferguson’s model seems only to concern itself with the spoken language. Second, the picture of the linguistic structure of pre-modern China complicates itself by the presence of different dialects, which in a sense challenges the binary system proposed by Ferguson. But since what is at issue here is the written language of China, mainly the relationship between wenyan and baihua, I allow myself to simplify the picture. I understand such simplification comes at the expense of 1) a more sophisticated view of baihua (the vernacular) as the linguistic medium in fiction and opera and as guanhua (Mandarin) required of almost everyone in or associated with the civil service, including manuals and guidebooks for how actually to carry out the tasks of being a magistrate, etc.; and 2) the relationship between baihua (the vernacular) and local dialects, the informal spoken language. Most recently, Edward Gunn has done substantial work on spoken languages in contemporary China. See, Edward Gunn, Rendering the Regional: Local Language in Contemporary Chinese Media (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
As many scholars have acknowledged, it is extremely difficult to determine exactly when the writing script of ancient Chinese began to diverge form speech. Bernhard Karlgren estimated that Chinese writing and speech started to part ways roughly at the end of the Western Han period (206 B.C. to 22 A.D.). Some other scholars such as John DeFrancis believe that the divorce of writing from speech started much earlier, probably in the earliest stages of Chinese writing, the Shang period. Also see Liangyan Ge, Out of the Margin: The Rise of Chinese Vernacular Fiction (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001). As many scholars have acknowledged, it is extremely difficult to determine.
See Victor Mair’s research on Tun-huang Manuscripts: T’ang Transformation Texts (Cambridge: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1989).
Hu Shi, “Introduction to Monkey,”, Monkey, trans. Arthur Waley (New York: Grove Press, 1970), 3.
Li Zhi “On the Child-Mind,”, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginning to 1911, ed. Stephen Owen (New York and London: Norton, 1996), 810.
For more detail on Wang Yangming’s philosophy, see Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).
Kang Youwei, Ta T’ung Shu (Shanghai: shanghai guji chubanshe, 2005), 101.
Hu Ying, Tales of Translation: Composing the New Women in China, 1899–1918 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 21–25.
Paul Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T’ao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974).
Chang Hao, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
Shen Fu, Six Records of a Floating Life, trans. Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui (Penguin Books, 1983), 101.
Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
For more detailed discussion on the early Jesuit missionaries’ attempts at roman-ization of the Chinese language, see DeFrances, Nationalism and Language Reform in China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950).
See Wang Feng, “Wanqing pinyinhua yu baihuawen cuifa de gouyusichao,” (“The National Language Trends Advanced by the Romanization and Vernacularization in the Late Qing Period”), in Wenxue yuyan yu wenzhang tishi—cong wanqing dao “wusi” (Literary Language and Literature Style—from the late Qing to the May Fourth period), ed. Xia Xiaohong (Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005), 23.
See S. Robert Ramsey, The Language of China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), in which he gives a vivid account about what happened at the conference on the unification of pronunciation.
See Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova, “The Origins of Modern Chinese Literature,”, Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, ed. Merle Goldman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 17–35.
Edward Gunn, “The Language of Early Republican Fiction in the Context of Print Media,” Comparative Literature: East & West, vol. 4, no.1 (Summer 2002): 37–57.
Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 19.
Chen Duxiu, “On Literary Revolution,”, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, ed. Kirk Denton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 141.
For a detailed discussion of the May Fourth Movement, see Chow Tse-Tusing, The May Fourth Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964).
Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986)
Benjamin Schwartz, ed., Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).
Kirk Denton, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 114.
Qian Xuantong, “Zhongguo jinhou zhi wenzi wenti,”, Zhongguo xinwenxue daxi (Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature), ed. Zhao Jiabi (Shanghai: liangyou tushu gongsi, 1935) vol. 1, 141.
For more on the spread of Esperanto in early twentieth-century China, see Muller & Benton, “Esperanto and Chinese Anarchism 1907–1920: The Translation from Diaspora to Homeland,” Language Problem and Language Planning, 30: 1 (2006): 45–73.
Lu Xun, “Guanyu xinwenzi” in Lu Xun Quanji (Complete Works of Lu Xun), (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981), vol. 6.
Fu Sinian, “Hanyu gaiyong pinyin wenzi de chubu tan” (“A Preliminary Discussion of Replacing Chinese Characters with a Phonetic System of Roman Letters”) in Zhao Jiabi, vol.1, 149. Also see Ping Chen, “China,”, Language and National Identity in Asia, ed. Andrew Simpson (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Zhu Jingnong, “Letter from Zhu Jingnong”, Hu Shi xueshu wenji (Collected Scholarly Work of Hu Shi), ed. Jiang Yihua (Zhonghua shuju, 1993).
Qu Qiubai, “Problems Pertaining to Mass Literature.” For a detailed discussion on the Leftist criticism on the May Fourth vernacular movement, see Merle Goldman, “Left-Wing Criticism of the Pai Hua Movement,”, Reflections on the May Fourth Movement, ed. Benjamin Schwartz (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 85–94.
C.T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 1917–1957 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 21.
Copyright information
© 2011 Gang Zhou
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zhou, G. (2011). The Language of Utopia. In: Placing the Modern Chinese Vernacular in Transnational Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117044_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117044_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29211-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11704-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)