Envisioning Readers and Shaping Knowledge: Two Instances of Textual Intersections Between China and Italy in the Early Twentieth Century

Within the construction framework of China Knowledge, a crucial role has been played by translations as creations of texts whose purposes clearly went beyond the transfer of meanings among different languages and cultures, thus becoming agencies in the shaping of a translingual space where Target Language and Source Language constantly interact. The process of transmission and acquisition of literary texts will be analysed here from two different kinds of approach and perspectives, represented by Mario Novaro (1868‑1944), a non-sinologist who carved out the earliest Italian translation of the Zhuangzi (1922), and Agostino Biagi (1882‑1957), a former Franciscan missionary in China whose legacy of manuscripts has recently been discovered and acclaimed, especially for his outstanding Chinese translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia .