The Scarlet Letter makes the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne known all around the world, while The White Snake is one of the most famous legends in China. This paper compares the two miserable heroines and reveals...The Scarlet Letter makes the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne known all around the world, while The White Snake is one of the most famous legends in China. This paper compares the two miserable heroines and reveals all the religions serve to the ruling power.展开更多
There is a long oral tradition and written record for the legend of the White Snake.As a woman,her“original sin”is being a snake.She is a snake who has cultivated herself for hundreds,if not thousands,of years to at...There is a long oral tradition and written record for the legend of the White Snake.As a woman,her“original sin”is being a snake.She is a snake who has cultivated herself for hundreds,if not thousands,of years to attain the form of a beautiful woman.Living as a resident“alien”(yilei)in the“Human Realm”(renjian),the White Snake has always been treated with suspicion,fear,exclusion,and violent suppression/exorcism.The White Snake is an immigrant to the human world,whose serpentine identity made her a“resident alien,”the legal category given to immigrants in the United States before they receive their“Green Card”and become a“permanent resident.”The implication of being a snake woman in the human world took on new meanings when the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the existing xenophobia,fcar,and suspicion toward minority populations in the contemporary United States and throughout the world.Inspired by the Chinese White Snake legend,the three Anglophone opera,film,and stage projects from Cerise Lim Jacobs,Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri,and Mary Zimmerman,energetically engage with issues relevant to minority activism in the United States and more broadly,through digital media and digital platforms.展开更多
Following Kenneth King＇s pioneering transmedial synthetic writings on post-modern dance practices and Kimerer L. LaMothe＇s call for dance to be treated seriously in religious and philosophical discourses, I examine ...Following Kenneth King＇s pioneering transmedial synthetic writings on post-modern dance practices and Kimerer L. LaMothe＇s call for dance to be treated seriously in religious and philosophical discourses, I examine Yan Geling＇s novella Baishe （White Snake, 1998）, in relation to Lilian Lee＇s novel qingshe （Green Snake, 1986-93）, with a focus on how dancing and writing function literally, metaphorically, dialectically, and reciprocally, in these narratives. In my textual and contextual analyses of Yan＇s White Snake text, I borrow Daria Halprin＇s therapeutic model for accessing life experiences through the body in motion. I argue that, through a creative use of writing and dancing as key metaphors for identity formation and transformation, Yan＇s text, in the context of contemporary China, offers innovative counter-narratives of gender, writing, and the body. Yan＇s White Snake is considered in the following three contexts in this paper： firstly, the expressiveness of the female body in the White Snake story; secondly, the tradition and significance of writing women in Chinese literary history; and thirdly, the development of dance as a profession in the PRC, with a real-life snake dancer at the center. These three different frameworks weave an intricate tapestry that reveals the dialectics of writing and dancing, and language and the body, throughout the latter half of twentieth-century China. Furthermore, Yan＇s text foregrounds the Cultural Revolution as an important chronotope for experimentation with a range of complex gender identities in relation to the expressive and symbolic powers of dancing and writing.展开更多
This article examines the literary imaginations of the White Pagoda and demonstrates a shift in its representation from a metaphor for the Song court＇s fate to a fantastic site for the subjugation of unworldly beings...This article examines the literary imaginations of the White Pagoda and demonstrates a shift in its representation from a metaphor for the Song court＇s fate to a fantastic site for the subjugation of unworldly beings. In the late thirteenth century, the Yuan-appointed Tibetan Buddhist monk Yang Lianzhenjia exhumed the imperial mausoleums of the defeated Southern Song, built the White Pagoda on the site of the old Southern Song palace in Hangzhou, and interred the exhumed bones under it. Enthusiastic Song loyalists thus considered the White Pagoda to be a symbol of a humiliating past in which the Mongol Yuan dynasty occupied the south. Meanwhile, Qu You, an early-Ming writer from Hangzhou, began to imagine that the White Pagoda served to pacify the innocent, lonely dead who died during the Song-Yuan social disturbance. Investigating the discourse of the early Ming literati in regard to the pagoda site and the supernatural in early Ming Hangzhou leads to the conclusion that the literary imagination of the White Pagoda would have also contributed to the development of the White Snake Legend, where a white serpent spirit was subdued under Thunder Peak Pagoda in Hangzhou.展开更多
文摘The Scarlet Letter makes the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne known all around the world, while The White Snake is one of the most famous legends in China. This paper compares the two miserable heroines and reveals all the religions serve to the ruling power.
文摘There is a long oral tradition and written record for the legend of the White Snake.As a woman,her“original sin”is being a snake.She is a snake who has cultivated herself for hundreds,if not thousands,of years to attain the form of a beautiful woman.Living as a resident“alien”(yilei)in the“Human Realm”(renjian),the White Snake has always been treated with suspicion,fear,exclusion,and violent suppression/exorcism.The White Snake is an immigrant to the human world,whose serpentine identity made her a“resident alien,”the legal category given to immigrants in the United States before they receive their“Green Card”and become a“permanent resident.”The implication of being a snake woman in the human world took on new meanings when the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the existing xenophobia,fcar,and suspicion toward minority populations in the contemporary United States and throughout the world.Inspired by the Chinese White Snake legend,the three Anglophone opera,film,and stage projects from Cerise Lim Jacobs,Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri,and Mary Zimmerman,energetically engage with issues relevant to minority activism in the United States and more broadly,through digital media and digital platforms.
文摘Following Kenneth King＇s pioneering transmedial synthetic writings on post-modern dance practices and Kimerer L. LaMothe＇s call for dance to be treated seriously in religious and philosophical discourses, I examine Yan Geling＇s novella Baishe （White Snake, 1998）, in relation to Lilian Lee＇s novel qingshe （Green Snake, 1986-93）, with a focus on how dancing and writing function literally, metaphorically, dialectically, and reciprocally, in these narratives. In my textual and contextual analyses of Yan＇s White Snake text, I borrow Daria Halprin＇s therapeutic model for accessing life experiences through the body in motion. I argue that, through a creative use of writing and dancing as key metaphors for identity formation and transformation, Yan＇s text, in the context of contemporary China, offers innovative counter-narratives of gender, writing, and the body. Yan＇s White Snake is considered in the following three contexts in this paper： firstly, the expressiveness of the female body in the White Snake story; secondly, the tradition and significance of writing women in Chinese literary history; and thirdly, the development of dance as a profession in the PRC, with a real-life snake dancer at the center. These three different frameworks weave an intricate tapestry that reveals the dialectics of writing and dancing, and language and the body, throughout the latter half of twentieth-century China. Furthermore, Yan＇s text foregrounds the Cultural Revolution as an important chronotope for experimentation with a range of complex gender identities in relation to the expressive and symbolic powers of dancing and writing.
文摘This article examines the literary imaginations of the White Pagoda and demonstrates a shift in its representation from a metaphor for the Song court＇s fate to a fantastic site for the subjugation of unworldly beings. In the late thirteenth century, the Yuan-appointed Tibetan Buddhist monk Yang Lianzhenjia exhumed the imperial mausoleums of the defeated Southern Song, built the White Pagoda on the site of the old Southern Song palace in Hangzhou, and interred the exhumed bones under it. Enthusiastic Song loyalists thus considered the White Pagoda to be a symbol of a humiliating past in which the Mongol Yuan dynasty occupied the south. Meanwhile, Qu You, an early-Ming writer from Hangzhou, began to imagine that the White Pagoda served to pacify the innocent, lonely dead who died during the Song-Yuan social disturbance. Investigating the discourse of the early Ming literati in regard to the pagoda site and the supernatural in early Ming Hangzhou leads to the conclusion that the literary imagination of the White Pagoda would have also contributed to the development of the White Snake Legend, where a white serpent spirit was subdued under Thunder Peak Pagoda in Hangzhou.
