1。1 No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy, who was called “the most prominent hermit in American literary since Salinger” was born in Providence, Rhode Island。 He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road, one of his most famous novels, in 2006。 No Country for Old Men was written while McCarthy was a fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, and adapted as a film of the same name in 2007, which won many awards。 Although No Country for Old Men was not ranked into McCarthy’s best novels, it still received widespread praise。 Some reviewers noted that No Country for Old Men is very different from his earlier works。 With the publication of No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy implements his transition from best-selling author to popular notional writer。 In No Country for Old Men, McCarthy creates a morality play that uses the seductiveness and corruption of the drug trade as narrative devices。 (Greewood, 2005)

No Country for Old Men was released in 2005。 The title came from the first line of William Butler Yeats’ poem—“Sailing to Byzantium”: “That is no country for old men。” The poem is about the relationship between aging, death, the soul, and the way of redeeming mortality。 The story of No Country for Old Men occurs in the vicinity of the United States and Mexico border in 1980, and concerns an illegal drug deal gone wrong way in the Texas backcountry。 The novel has three main characters: Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, Anton Chigurh, Llewelyn Moss。 Anton Chigurh is a psychopathic killer, and Bell, a west Texas sheriff, is the ethical lawman。 Caught in the crossfire between these two men is Llewellyn Moss, a young hunter and veteran, has stumbled across $2 million in drug money in the Texas desert。 Chigurh and Bell are both hunting Moss: Chigurh to kill him, Bell to save him。论文网

The translated version of Cao Yuanyong was released in 2012。 On the one hand, the distinctive style of writing, the ingenuity of art architecture and the embedded multiple of serious topics of No Country for Old Men attract Cao Yuanyong。 On the other hand, with the population of the film of No Country for Old Men, which edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, Chinese have started attention to Cormac McCarthy。 Meanwhile, demand for reading the original work will appear。

1。2 Research Design

The paper is mainly pided to following parts: brief descriptions of Cormac McCarthy and No Country for Old Men; the introduction of the theory of Reception Aesthetics; analysis of Cao Yuanyong’s version base on the view of reader’s expectations, which is a part of reception theory。 

The original author Cormac McCarthy and the research objective—No Country for Old Men, both version and original, should be introduced in the first part of this paper。 Second, explaining the theory of Reception Aesthetics from the origin to the significance。 Then, illustrating cases form the translation, trying to testify the applicability of Reception Aesthetics in translation。

2 Theoretical Perspectives

Since 1980s, Chinese scholars began to think of receptive aesthetic thought of readers in the light of the Reception Aesthetic。 Reception Aesthetic is important in the history of literary and arts。 It begins to transfer the emphasis from the study of the authors and works to the study of the audience’s aesthetic expectations and acceptability。 In this chapter, the author tries to find out the relationships between Reception Aesthetics and translation。 

2。1 Origin of Reception Aesthetics

Reception aesthetics, a school of aesthetics of literature and arts, also known as Reception Theory, is a version of reader response literary theory, of which the representatives are Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser。 It arose in the 1960s in Germany。 Theory of Hans Robert Jauss is mainly based on Martin Heidegger’s concepts in hermeneutics。 Another advocator, Wolfgang Iser, is mainly influenced by phenomenology。文献综述