The First Documented Italian-Language Course at Peking University (1918-1920) and the Curriculum-Text-Stage Pathway to Futurist Play in China

This article identifies the first documented Italian-language course at Peking University (1918-1920) – a principal site of the New Culture Movement – and establishes Song Chunfang as its first professor of Italian. Framed by Peking University’sreforms, itreconstructs a transmission path- way – curriculum → text → stage – linking Italian-language pedagogy, the translation of Futurist play, and the earliest documented staging of Futurist play in early twentieth-century China. It also examines Song’s little-known 1920 visit to Italy to study the education system, his exchanges with the Italian sinologist Giovanni Vacca, and his collection of Italian-language teaching materials and dramatic scripts. To substantiate this pathway, a case study of The Experimental Little Theatre’s pre- miere and reception demonstrates the move from translation to performance and corroborates the proposed sequence. More broadly, the study advances a path-centered approach to the mediation and circulation of Italian literature in early twentieth-century China.