中國現代女作家的「英國體驗」（1912-1949）

Abstract

Cultural exchange between China and Britain has been extensively studied in literary history since the late Qing dynasty. During China's early 20th-century sociohistorical transformations, integration with other cultures drove modern Chinese literature's development. Exploration of entanglements between this literature and British culture proves vital to understanding how female Chinese intellectuals engaged in cross-cultural communication and viewed "others." Compared to males, women accessing foreign knowledge utilised Britain as a reflective lens on identities and roles. This thesis focuses on four women—Zeng Baosun, Yuan Changying, Yang Jiang, and Ling Shuhua—who lived in Britain from 1912 to 1949. It explores the everyday experiences and practices of their cross-cultural lives. Their "British experiences" supplement analyses of women's writing and cross-cultural history. Adopting this concept, it examines writings on daily British life, cultural views/commentary, and works reflecting Sino-British exchange. Concurrently, archival research reconsiders cross-cultural contexts of their travels. An interdisciplinary approach combines cross-cultural, women's, historical, and translation studies.

This thesis examines the multifaceted "British experiences" of modern Chinese women writers in the early 20th century and how they shaped these writers' subjectivities and literary works through cross-cultural interactions. The Introduction establishes the historical context of women's roles in Sino-British cultural exchange and prior scholarly research on this topic. Chapter One explores the relationship between "cross-border experiences" and modern Chinese women's literature. It identifies three categories of cross-cultural engagement: geographical mobility, linguistic/textual transformation, and cultural integration. These paths inform a conceptual framework for analysing writers' "British experiences."

Chapter Two examines Zeng Baosun's cross-cultural practices and their impact on modern women's education in China, particularly regarding "everydayness." It analyses editions of her memoirs published in different periods/regions to uncover their historical significance. The chapter also discusses cross-cultural elements in the training and school life at Zeng's Yifang Girls' Middle School, informed by her experience at Westfield College, University of London.

Chapter Three focuses on Yuan Changying, who studied in London after Zeng Baosun. It examines Yuan's life experiences, writings in various genres, and her "British experience," as reflected in her translations. Original archival sources from the University of Edinburgh are utilised. Yuan's daily life at the University of Edinburgh exposed her to multidisciplinary knowledge and cross-cultural ideas. Her interdisciplinary vision emerged from English literature and translation studies. However, her "British experience" also involved localisation through reflections on social and historical issues in that context.

Chapter Four focuses on Yang Jiang's life in Britain by examining her reading history of English literature, academic research, and translations. These are explored as essential parts of her daily cross-cultural experience and cultural reference for self-consciousness. It analyses Yang Jiang's writings from the perspective of "Yang Jiang and British Culture" and how British culture/literature entered her life through personal memories, literary readings, and translations.

Chapter Five takes Ling Shuhua's letters to Virginia Woolf as the principal object. Closely reading these personal letters in English explores how Ling Shuhua reconstructed facets of everyday life during wartime through her cross-cultural dialogue with Woolf. Ling Shuhua's emotional experiences, including writing strategies, language anxieties, literary criticism, and observations of ordinary people, reflected her cross-cultural mediation of sense of self, womanhood and understanding of the world as "British experiences" in English writing and cultural translation.

Through the study of these female intellectual's "British experiences," it is evident that the content of everyday life shapes their diverse cross-cultural experiences from a female perspective and that their experiences complement the narrative of macrohistory from microhistory. Through the everydayness of these processes, their "British experience" emphasises that the journey of cross-cultural practices and dialogues of civilisation is made of actual events and situations completed by true individuals.

Date of Award	1 Sept 2023
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Wendong CUI (Supervisor), Carlos Yu-Kai LIN (Supervisor) & Xing FAN (External Supervisor)