Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T20:39:22.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Eugene O'Neill in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Haiping Liu
Affiliation:
Professor and Chair of English at, Nanjing University.

Extract

Like his popularity in the United States, which has fluctuated sharply over the past sixty years or so, Eugene O'Neill's reception in China has had its twists and turns. He was widely read, translated, performed, critically reviewed and even creatively imitated in the 1930s, but this love affair was brought to an almost complete stop by China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which lasted eight years from 1937 to 1945. When the war was over, there were some attempts at reviving the interest, but with the changed political situation, these efforts were followed by an even longer silence and occasional harsh criticism.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Parts of Batson's report are recorded in Arthur, and Gelb, Barbara, O'Neill. Enlarged Edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 684Google Scholar; and Sheaffer, Louis. O'Neill, Son and Artist (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 317.Google Scholar

2 Xing Yue Monthly, Vol. I, No. 11, Shanghai, 1929. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Chinese sources included in this paper are my own.

3 Beixing Monthly, Vol. III, No. 8, Shanghai, 1929, pp. 55–62.

4 Hsun, Lu. “Preface to the First Collection of Short Stories: Call to Arms.” in Selected Stories of Lu Hsun (Beijing: Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 1972), p. 5.Google Scholar (The translation is in part re-rendered.)

5 Benxian, Dian, “the Influence of the Western Modernist Drama on the Development of Modern Chinese Drama,” Nankai University Journal, II (1983), p. 23.Google Scholar

6 Qian, Xia, “Ibsen in China,” in The Dragon Beard Versus the Blueprint (London, 1944), p. 17.Google Scholar

7 Ying, Huang, “On O'Neill's Plays,” Qin-nien Jie [Youth] Monthly (Shanghai, March 20, 1932), p. 163.Google Scholar

8 Shen, Hong, “O'Neill and Hong Shen,” Selected Plays of Hong Shen (Shanghai, 1933).Google Scholar Reprinted in Juben [Plays] XI (Beijing, 1984), pp. 82–85.

10 Qian, Xiao, “O'Neill,” Guowen Zhoubao [National News Weekly] (Tianjin, Nov. 1936), p. 37.Google Scholar

11 Xiedai Monthly. Vol. V, No. 6. Shanghai, October. 1934.

13 Qian, Xiao, “O'Neill,” p. 37.Google Scholar

14 Changying, Yuan, “The Emperor Jones and Zhao—the King of Hell,” Shan Ju San Mo [Sketches from a Nook] (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1937), pp. 153163.Google Scholar

15 Documents of the Fifty Years' Spoken Drama Movement in China, ed. Tien Han et al. (Beijing: China Drama Press, 1958), p. 110.

16 Chen, David Y., “Two Chinese Adaptations of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones.” Modern Drama, 9 (1967), 431439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Selected Works of Hong Shen (Beijing: Kaiming Press, 1951), p. 8.

18 Ibid. Preface.

19 See, for instance, the aforementioned essay by David Y. Chen (footnote 16); Chen's, Mr. “TheTrilogy of T'sao Yu and Western Drama,” Asia and the Humanities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), pp. 2637Google Scholar; and Dongling, Zhu, “On Chao Yu's Dramatic Career” (unpublished dissertation, Nanjing University, 1981).Google Scholar

20 See, for instance, such recent plays as Zhong-jun, Ma and Hong-yuan, Jia. A Warm Current Outside the House, in Juben, VI (Beijing, 1980)Google Scholar; Weixing, Li and Bangyu, Zhen, A tom and Love in Juben, IV (Beijing, 1980)Google Scholar; and Hong-yuan, Jia and Zhong-jun, Ma, Path, in Juben, X (Beijing, 1981).Google Scholar