The Story of “Sun Ce's Angry Beheading of Yu Ji” from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Transformations, Adaptations and Interpretations in Europe

In the second half of the 19th century, different versions of the story of “Sun Ce's Angry Beheading of Yu Ji” in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were translated, adapted, literarily reconstructed and textually interpreted in England, France and Germany. The story's circulation in Europe exemplifies the inheritance, openness and expansibility of Chinese stories in the process of circulation in the world's literary systems. In the English-speaking world, selections from the story have been translated and commented on by sinologists such as Joseph Edkins, C. H. Brewitt-Taylor and Francis Lister Hawks Pott. The story's circulation in the cultural and literary contexts of the English-speaking world has seen a relatively stable inheritance. In the Frenchspeaking world, the French sinologist Theodore Pavie(1847-1925) showed his concern for the status of Taoism in the story in his translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Pavie constructed a new narrative framework for the story in his novel YuKi le magicien, adapting it to the discourse of world literature, and making some additions to the details of the characters' daily lives, which allows the story to take on an exotic flavor. In the German-speaking world, Paul Heyse's literary reconstruction of the storyline of “The Young Warlord Beheads Yu Ji” embeds German poetics and cultural contexts in the Chinese story, demonstrating a unique aesthetic reconstruction of its form and cultural connotation. On another front, the quotation within and interpretation of this storyline by the German sinologist Carl Arendt(1838-1902) and contemporary sinologists manifest the intentional construction of the East in assent with Western ideology, which seeks to have Chinese stories conform to the logic of Western discourse, thus confirming and reinforcing the cultural values of the Westerners. The transformations, adaptations and interpretations of the story of “Sun Ce's Angry Beheading of Yu Ji” in Europe evince the contradictions that need to be dealt with when Chinese stories are integrated into the Western cultural contexts. This research provides an important insight into the study of how Chinese stories in world literature present their cultural values in the Western cultural and literary contexts.