Overview

This open access book offers a groundbreaking exploration of how iconicity: language's resemblance to its referents—is central to classical Chinese poetry and how it intersects with the visual expressiveness of English digital poetry. Drawing on semiotic theory and phenomenological aesthetics, this study proposes a translator-centered approach to rendering lexical, syntactic, and textual iconicity in poetry. It analyzes the iconic roles of lianzi (炼字), wenju (文句), lvju (律句), aoju (拗句), and yimai (意脉), offering practical insights for translators. Inspired by digital poetry's visual and sonic dimensions, the book argues for the integration of Chinese ideograms into programming languages to enhance poetic expression. Bridging comparative literature, semiotics, and digital art, this is a timely contribution to translation studies and the evolving field of digital poetics.

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9789819588435

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Guangxu Zhao is Senior Research Fellow of English literature and literary translation studies at Nanning Normal University, winner of the fund of the National Social Science of China for the research project: “English Digital Poetry and the Translation of the Iconicity of Classical Chinese Poetry”; relevant papers published: “Translating iconicities of classical Chinese poetry” (2018) and “Semiotics East and West: an aesthetic-semiotic approach to translating the iconicity of classical Chinese poetry”(2022) in Semiotica.

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