The global white snake / Liang Luo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luo, Liang, 1974- author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

China understandings today

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bai she zhuan.

Tales--China.

Tales.

Snakes.

Legends.

China.

Tales--History and criticism.

Snakes--China--Legends.

Serpents in literature.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 353 pages) : illustrations (chiefly color).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2021.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

The Global White Snake examines the Chinese White Snake legends and their extensive, multidirectional travels within Asia and across the globe. Such travels across linguistic and cultural boundaries have generated distinctive traditions as the White Snake has been reinvented in the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English-speaking worlds, among others. Moreover, the inter-Asian voyages and global circulations of the White Snake legends have enabled them to become repositories of diverse and complex meanings for a great number of people, serving as reservoirs for polyphonic expressions ranging from the attempts to consolidate authoritarian power to the celebrations of minority rights and activism. The Global White Snake uncovers how the White Snake legend often acts as an unsettling narrative of radical tolerance for hybrid sexualities, loving across traditional boundaries, subverting authority, and valuing the strange and the uncanny. A timely mediation and reflection on our contemporary moment of continued struggle for minority rights and social justice, The Global White Snake revives the radical anti-authoritarian spirit slithering under the tales of monsters and demons, love and lust, and reminds us of the power of the fantastic and the fabulous in inspiring and empowering personal and social transformations.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction to the White Snake Legends p. 1

Gender and Species, and Media and Politics p. 2

Metamorphoses and Regenerations p. 6

Legends of the White Snake p. 9

The Power of Transmigration p. 15

Aspirations in the Remaking of the Legends p. 17

Theoretical Implications p. 24

Part I The White Snake at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Chapter 2 The White Snake Problem versus the White Snake Industry p. 29

The White Snake Problem p. 29

The White Snake Industry p. 48

Chapter 3 The Fall of the Pagoda and the Rise of the White Snake p. 69

The Fall of the Pagoda and the Visualization of a Vanished Past p. 69

The Rise of the White Snake and the Canonization of "The White Snake Modern" p. 92

Part II The Profound Humanity Of The Nonhuman During The Cold War

Chapter 4 The White Snake Legend in Postwar Japanese Cinema p. 107

Exquisite Paradise and Forbidden Love p. 108

White Pearl, Red Scarf, and "The Witchcraft of Love" p. 121

Flowers, Animals, and Humans p. 133

Chapter 5 Reconfiguring the White Snake in Korean Cinema in an Inter-Asian Context p. 145

Sino-Korean Cinematic Connections p. 145

Shin Sang-ok's First White Snake Film p. 148

Shin's Forgotten Second Attempt p. 159

A Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Coproduction? p. 167

Part III The Specter of the Past in Contemporary Popular Culture

Chapter 6 Reconfiguring the Legend in Mainland China and Hong Kong p. 183

Writing and Dancing the Text and the Body p. 184

The Writing Women of China p. 193

A Dancing White Snake p. 194

Writing, Dancing, and the Cultural Revolution as Memory and Imagination p. 199

Chapter 7 The White Snake Legend in the United States in the Twenty-First Century p. 210

From Chinese Legend to Pulitzer-Prize Winning Western Opera p. 211

The Powers and Possibilities of Performance p. 221

Poetry, Photography and Fashion p. 235

Chapter 8 The Eternal Bodies of the White Snake p. 244

Korean Webtoon Lady White and Her Afterlife in Chinese p. 244

The Return of the Powerful Hybrid p. 248

Queering an Icon, Becoming a Demon p. 251

Everlasting Bodily Memory p. 255

Tracking the Mediated Bodies in the White Snake Legends p. 260.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-355) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472129157

0472129155

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.