Olivia Lingyi Xu

I am a scholar of Anglophone and Sinophone literary traditions of the long nineteenth century, with particular interests in novel theory and translation studies. My current project uncovers a translational history of the novel amidst the tectonic shifts of two world language regimes in the long nineteenth century: the rise of global English and the decline of Classical Chinese. Countering the familiar narrative that the novel form rises in Europe and is subsequently translated elsewhere, my project argues that translation is a prerequisite for the novel to become a literary form. Through an Anglo-Chinese comparative lens, I read novelistic forms such as historical mimesis, frame narratives, free indirect discourse, and heteroglossia as translingual and translational technologies that both facilitate and contest the imperial (de)formation of these two linguistic hegemonies. In doing so, my project reveals how residual forms of imperial ideologies continue to haunt the disciplinary transformations from English and Chinese Studies to global Anglophone and Sinophone Studies.

My research has been recognized with the “Expanding the Field” essay award from Northeastern Victorian Studies Association. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Victorian Studies, Comparative Literature, and ELH.