Translation and Feminization in Yu Dafu's "Moving South"

Yu Dafu's novella "Moving South" forms a dialogic relationship with Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship in the male protagonist's translation of the song "Kennst du das Land?" Wilhelm Meister's translation of Mignon's Italian singing into this German song emblematizes the formation of a masculine rational German subject through cofiguring an Italian other as too feminine and emotional to be domesticated. Yi Ren's translation of the central line in the song into Chinese emblematizes the formation of a transnational as a sentimental and feminine figure through cofiguring a Japanese woman as an other that cannot be domesticated. "Moving South" critiques European Romanticism and Christianity.