Ye Yuan
Columbia University, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Faculty Member
- I am a Sino-Japanese literary and cultural scholar. My research interests include Sinitic studies, vernacular literature, colloquial Chinese, sound studies, and translation and adaptation in early modern East Asia. The sound and speech, perception and emotion of the past are the essential elements I intend to unentangle from the early modern written source in my research. In my current book project, I examine the... moreI am a Sino-Japanese literary and cultural scholar. My research interests include Sinitic studies, vernacular literature, colloquial Chinese, sound studies, and translation and adaptation in early modern East Asia.
The sound and speech, perception and emotion of the past are the essential elements I intend to unentangle from the early modern written source in my research. In my current book project, I examine these issues by considering the status of contemporary colloquial Chinese in early modern Japan. Based on my dissertation “Contemporary Spoken Chinese in Eighteenth-Century Japan: Language Learning, Fiction Writing, and Vocality,” this book project explores the learning of contemporary spoken Chinese and writing in colloquial Chinese in early modern Japan. It is an inquiry into the early modern East Asian understanding of “language” before the Western, phonocentric view became dominant. I am inspired to discover the familiarity and alienation that the Japanese scholars felt in dealing with contemporary Chinese language and literature. With such familiarity and alienation, these scholars not only aimed to position the colloquial Chinese texts they encountered but also discovered their own positions relative to the Japanese convention of Sinitic studies as well as the trans-local Sinitic culture.
My research takes Sinitic literature as a nexus that brings political, intellectual, social, and cultural factors together. I ask how colloquial Chinese language and literature studies in 18th century Japan challenges, or confirms, Japan’s long Sinitic tradition. By investigating literary exchanges during the Chosŏn Korean diplomatic missions to Tokugawa Japan, I probe into the role of literary Sinitic in intellectual and political conversations and conflicts between Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan. I also draw on Sinitic magazines, which prevailed in the nineteenth century and demonstrated the last glamor of Sinitic literature in Japan. I believe these primary sources help to further deepen our understanding of Sinitic literature as the field that connects different locales and transcends the boundary of pre-modern and modern.
In sum, my research seeks to posit the studies of “Chinese” speech and texts in Sinitic studies in Japan and, furthermore, East Asia—a region with shared texts and culture based on the mute literary Sinitic. Chinese speech breaks the silence and invites us to peek into an early modern imagination of the voices and cultures of East Asia.edit
This article examines literary texts both as records transmitted through archives and as cultural sites recording preferred knowledge. It focuses on the late Ming era (1368–1644) Chinese vernacular short story anthology Xingshi yan 型世言... more
This article examines literary texts both as records transmitted through archives and as cultural sites recording preferred knowledge. It focuses on the late Ming era (1368–1644) Chinese vernacular short story anthology Xingshi yan 型世言 (Exemplary Words for the World, ca. 1632)—the only extant copy preserved in the Kyujanggak Archives in South Korea—and its Chosŏn (1392–1910) rendition in the Korean alphabet, Hyŏngse ŏn, housed in the Jangseogak Archives. Xingshi yan, taking seriously the Chinese vernacular literature’s claim of being “unofficial history,” provides its own historical narrative of the Ming at the end of the dynasty when it was threatened by the Manchus. Recording the notable Ming figures and affairs,
this anthology creates a literary archive furnishing materials for Ming history. In addition, this article points out the significance of the Kyujanggak Xingshi yan in solving the ambiguous textual origins of several Chinese vernacular story anthologies that were previously associated with the famous Second Amazement. Eventually, it traces the trajectory of how Xingshi yan was preserved in the Korean royal archives and appreciated by royal family members, and how its stories were rendered into the Korean alphabet for reasons of cultural and literary preference as well as to address the intended audience of Chosŏn. The making and remaking of Xingshi yan stories in both China and Korea, this article argues, illuminate the varied knowledge preferences and selections in the forming of the two cultures’ respective literary archives.
this anthology creates a literary archive furnishing materials for Ming history. In addition, this article points out the significance of the Kyujanggak Xingshi yan in solving the ambiguous textual origins of several Chinese vernacular story anthologies that were previously associated with the famous Second Amazement. Eventually, it traces the trajectory of how Xingshi yan was preserved in the Korean royal archives and appreciated by royal family members, and how its stories were rendered into the Korean alphabet for reasons of cultural and literary preference as well as to address the intended audience of Chosŏn. The making and remaking of Xingshi yan stories in both China and Korea, this article argues, illuminate the varied knowledge preferences and selections in the forming of the two cultures’ respective literary archives.
Research Interests:
Heavily loaded with adultery and eroticism, the world of Jin Ping Mei is seemingly at odds with the notion of faithfulness (zhen 貞). Studies emphasizing physical and material desire depicted in this novel often overlook the theme of... more
Heavily loaded with adultery and eroticism, the world of Jin Ping Mei is seemingly at odds with the notion of faithfulness (zhen 貞). Studies emphasizing physical and material desire depicted in this novel often overlook the theme of chastity. Faithful women dedicated to their husbands (alive or deceased) do exist in Jin Ping Mei. These figures are often adapted from previous literary works or from other characters in the novel itself. The present article focuses on episodes that deal with and complicate the concept of chastity, concentrating on the stories of Han Aijie, Song Huilian, and Chen Yulan. Through close examination of these characters and their development from their literary origins, I argue that stories of faithful ladies shed crucial light on the novel's literary borrowing and contemplation of narrative.
Research Interests:
Ecologies of Translation in East and South East Asia, 1600-1900 is a groundbreaking volume on early modern inter-Asian translation examines how translation from plain Chinese was situated at the nexus between, on the one hand, the... more
Ecologies of Translation in East and South East Asia, 1600-1900 is a groundbreaking volume on early modern inter-Asian translation examines how translation from plain Chinese was situated at the nexus between, on the one hand, the traditional standard of biliteracy characteristic of literary practices in the Sinographic sphere, and on the other, practices of translational multilingualism (competence in multiple spoken languages to produce a fully localized target text). Translations from plain Chinese are shown to carve out new ecologies of translations that not only enrich our understanding of early modern translation practices across the Sinographic sphere, but also demonstrate that the transregional uses of a non-alphabetic graphic technology call for different models of translation theory.