Pu Songling's - Xiangqun (湘裙) - English Version

[maeti90 0]

Dear everybody,

 

I'm currently writing a paper about one of the stories found in Pu Songlings Liaozhaizhiyi (聊斋志异). To be more precise, I'm analyzing different aspects of the story named "Xiangqun". My question now is, what is the proper English translation of this title? I really have a hard time finding an English version (I have read the German version "Verführung aus der Unterwelt" so far). If somebody can give me a link to an online readable version of this story or knows in which English translation I can find it under which title, I shall be very grateful

 

Many thanks in advance

 

Matt

[Luxi 854]

湘裙 is the name of the woman in the story. Those characters don't translate readily into anything, and there is no need to translate names.  Very often, translated Chinese names don't add anything to the text and are best left in pinyin - my opinion, others may disagree.

 

Here's a very handy reference from Google (the story starts in page1878 and most of it is online)

 

There are several English translations of the 'Strange Tales' in English, I don't think they all have the story you're after, but volume 5 in Sondergard's translation on Google Books obviously does. The free ones you'll find on-line are by Herbert Giles and are not faithful representation of the stories, he expurgated and 'cleaned' the content to suit his morals. I have John Minford's very good translation published by Penguin (also as a Kindle e-book), but I can't remember that story.