Misled by Literature: Bovaristic Reading of Translated Love Stories in Modern China
The Researchers
Qian LiuLink opens in a new window is Associate Professor of Translation Studies and Chinese. Her second monograph is forthcoming in 2026 which explores the reading of translated love stories among Chinese readers in the early twentieth century and contains the scenario with a brand new conceptual framework, combining the examination of translated texts with the experience of reading, and ultimately that of the phenomenon of being misled by literature. Other branches of her current research include enchanted reading across languages and cultures; the role of exophonic writing, that is, creative writing in one鈥檚 foreign languages, in the intervention of mental health; and contemporary British Chinese literature.
The Challenge
How do we approach knowledge, assumptions, and desires, abstract notions that have such a firm grasp on our reality? This is a question that we keep asking ourselves even today. In Misled by Literature, the first monograph to examine the obsession with translated love stories in early twentieth-century China, Qian Liu argues that as much as reading in general can have an impact on a reader鈥檚 interpretation of reality, reading translated works can similarly be a way of understanding the world, which then leads readers to act upon their newly gained sentiments and ideals.
Our Approach
This book explores the profound influence that reading translated works had on readers in early twentieth-century China, focusing particularly on the impact translated love stories had on perceptions of love, desires, the self, and the world, shaping real life behaviours of the readers, both historical and fictive ones. The volume charts the rise of Chinese readers鈥� obsession with translated romantic literature, following the proliferation of foreign literary works translated into Chinese at the turn of the twentieth century. What emerged is what Liu refers to as 鈥淏ovaristic Reading,鈥� an obsessive mode of reading where the boundary between fiction and reality becomes porous. Using the concept of 鈥淏ovarysm鈥�, originally defined by Jules de Gaultier as 鈥渢he human ability to conceive of oneself as other than one is,鈥� this book uncovers how reading in translation can have important ramifications for generating alternative visions of the self and the world. Like Flaubert鈥檚 Emma Bovary, modern Chinese readers engaged with romantic literature with such zeal that the boundary between literature and life blurred. Although their reading, or misreading, of literature often went too far, they nevertheless represented a profound phenomenon in a person鈥檚 approach to words, language, and literature, as well as the notions, ideals, and knowledge therein contained, a phenomenon most poignantly conveyed by the exclamation of the modern Chinese writer Lu Yin鈥攖hat is, 鈥淜nowledge misled me.鈥� By probing the intriguing way literature can (mis)lead its enchanted readers, this monograph centers these phenomena by examining historical evidence of such reading among young adults and students, including the texts themselves, autobiographical writing of modern Chinese writers, and literary representations and parodies of such reading in modern Chinese literature.
Our Impact
In this book, Liu proposes a rethinking of the radical idealism of the May Fourth era. Although the May Fourth New Culture Movement is often considered to uphold rational, enlightenment thinking, the Bovaristic reading practices of its writers and readers should not be overlooked. Modern Chinese reception of translated romantic stories often took whatever these stories prized to be extremely desirable. As a result, the pursuit of the alternative self, the romantic world, and the 鈥渋mpossible absolute鈥� helped to infuse the May Fourth spirit with a radical idealism marked by a black-or-white binarism and an almost absolute faith in knowledge and enlightenment. Such a radical idealism has had a long-lasting impact on modern and contemporary Chinese culture and on the way people think about things today. In our present time, the concepts of Bovarysm and Bovaristic reading still offer crucial explanatory power, even when we apply them to different types of texts, genres, and media. Bovarysm can be observed in celebrity fandom, and in people鈥檚 keen interest in other people鈥檚 lives that they glimpse at through social media, amid other contemporary social and cultural phenomena. Taken together, this book not only allows for further insights into debates on the 鈥渃ounter-enlightenment鈥� in this period in the modern Chinese cultural sphere but also the powerful role of reading in our understanding of ourselves and the world. Combining textual, theoretical, and historical analyses, this monograph will be of interest to scholars from a variety of fields, including Chinese literature and culture, the study of reading and reception, Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and World Literature.