Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale

Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
Journal issue | 56 | 2020
Research Article | Ah Q Travels to Europe

Ah Q Travels to Europe

Christoph Hein’s Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q (1983) and Dario Fo’s La storia di Qu (2011)

Abstract

This study focuses on the adaptations of the novella “The True Story of Ah Q” by the Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881-1936), produced by two important European playwrights, Christoph Hein (b. 1944) and Dario Fo (1926-2016), who ‘translated’ Lu Xun’s famous character respectively into a problematic nihilist (Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q, 1983) and into a revolutionary Chinese Harlequin (La storia di Qu, 1989; 2011). These two plays appropriate the ‘hypotext’ into a new cultural geography, which is neither Chinese nor completely German or Italian, but rather a transcultural space based on the European intellectual tradition of the ‘anarchist’. In this case translation means a thorough transformation and change which allows Lu Xun’s work to ‘live on’ (Fortleben, as in Walter Benjamin’s theory).


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Feb. 6, 2020 | Accepted: April 17, 2020 | Published June 30, 2020 | Language: en

Keywords Fortleben • Appropriation • Contact zone • Adaptation • Transcultural rewriting

Copyright © 2020 Nicoletta Pesaro. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2020/01/018


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