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This paper studies the evermore widespread phenomenon of the adaptation of novels for the stage, focusing on prizewinning contemporary Chinese novels. The first part provides the theoretical approach that is adopted in the second part, where two cases studies are discussed, i.e the stage adaptation of the novel Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi and of the novel To Live by Yu Hua. Starting from the perspective of “horizontal relations” among texts (Hutcheon 2013), the analysis of the adaptation process takes its distance from the fidelity/infidelity discourse, in order to investigate the network of echoing versions (trans-media, trans-language, etc) it is able to produce. This network is much more interesting to explore than supposed vertical hierarchies. Nevertheless, not every version is a text able to live independently from its source: the analysis shows that today's phenomenon of trans-media adaptation is fostered by a cultural industry that aims at exploiting all profits from a best-selling prizewinning novel. The role played by this industry in the adaptation process needs to be fully considered., Kervan. International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, Scritti e pensieri per Pinuccia Caracchi

This article traces the translation path that led to various Western theatrical rewritings of The Orphan of Zhao family (Zhaoshi gu'er 趙氏孤兒), the famous Chinese drama of the Yuan 元 dynasty (1271-1368) by playwright Ji Junxiang紀君祥. Taking into account the earliest historical Chinese sources, the article analyses the theatrical and musical re-adaptations that followed the first French translation of the drama, by the Jesuit missionary J. H. M. de Prémare (1735). In particular, the analysis focuses on the libretto L’eroe cinese (The Chinese Hero) by Pietro Metastasio (1752). Comparing and analysing the textus receptus and this Italian rewriting, we try to demonstrate how the image of China represented in this work, filtered through the translation of P. de Prémare, is only evoked as an exotic context, following the fashion of the era for the chinoiserie. Subsequently, the article offers a comparison between Cheng Ying, main character of Chinese drama, and Leango, protagonist of the melodrama by Metastasio, analysing the way in which they express their loyalty to their lord and react to the adversities of life, revealing the cultural differences of the context from which the two works derived., Kervan. International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, V. 23 N. 1