Sharing the lecture held on July 11, 2023.

Translating the Stone:
Henry Bencraft Joly, China’s Greatest Novel, and Joseon Era Korea

SPEAKER: Ronald Gray

SUMMARY:

If you have visited the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery in Seoul, you may have come across an intriguing, tall, stone, Victorian grave monument with fading incised Chinese characters and English lettering. The monument marks the grave of the British diplomat Henry Bencraft Joly (1857-1898), who was Vice-Consul to the Chemulpo (modern day Incheon) Consulate in Korea at the time of his death. Joly was also a noted translator of China’s most celebrated novel 紅樓夢 (Honglou meng, commonly known as Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone), having published an English translation of the first 56 chapters of the novel. This lecture will first discuss Joly’s life in Korea, his translation of Honglou meng, as well as other 19^th century English translations of the work, and what they reveal about Western attitudes about East Asia. The second half of the talk will examine Honglou meng’s reception in Korea, how it was translated, and its great popularity with Korean women, including palace females. The lecture concludes with a brief discussion of the novel’s current status in Korea and the West, and the importance of “humanizing” translation history.

BIO:

Ronald Gray has taught at universities in South Korea, China, Japan, and most recently Ohio University in the U.S. He has written and co-edited three books on Honglou meng, including the 2022 work Reading Dream of the Red Chamber: A Companion to Cao Xueqin’s Masterpiece, as well as articles on the novel for Western and Chinese journals. He has also published an intellectual biography of the American cultural critic and historian Paul Fussell, and a book on Evelyn Waugh’s famous novel Brideshead Revisited. He lives in Gongju, Korea.