Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy - Paperback

by Cathy Yue Wang (Author)

Politics and paradigm shifts underlying contemporary retellings of fantastic traditional Chinese tales.

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Author Cathy Yue Wang examines the processes by which modern authors and filmmakers reshape these traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate the ingrained patriarchal paradigm. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative that allow contemporary interpretations to reimagine the gender politics and contexts of the tales retold. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between past and present, traditional and contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world. Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters offers an engaging interdisciplinary investigation of issues at the heart of these traditional tales such as gender and status hierarchy, marriage and family life, and in-group/out-group distinction. Beyond the content of these individual stories, Wang ties these narratives together across time using cognitive literary criticism, especially affective narratology, to shed new light on the adaptation of literary and cultural texts and their sociopolitical contexts.

Back Jacket

Author Cathy Yue Wang shows how modern authors and filmmakers reshape Chinese traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate ingrained patriarchal paradigms. Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales, which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative discourse during the process of retellings and adaptations of traditional fantastic texts, and then explores the influences of these changes on the gender politics of the original texts. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between the past and the present, the traditional and the contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world.

Author Biography

Cathy Yue Wang is a lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Shanghai Normal University and a member of their Innovative Team of High-Level Program in International Comparative Literature. Her research and work are focused on applying feminist and queer perspectives to examinations of East Asian popular culture, transmedia storytelling, and subcultures and fandoms. She has previously published works related to media and literature studies in Children's Literature in Education, Asian Studies Review, and Series: International Journal of TV Serial Narratives.