The Modernity of the Pre-modern: Gender Transgressions in the Early Metamorphoses of the White Snake Legend (original) (raw)

Abstract

This presentation offers close readings of key White Snake texts with an emphasis on gender ambiguities and role reversals central to these texts’ metamorphoses. These texts include the Tang legends Li Huang and Jiyi ji as recorded in Taiping guangji from the tenth century; the Song tale Xihu santa ji as collected in Qingpingshan tang huaben from the sixteenth century, Feng Menglong’s vernacular tale Bainiangzi yongzhen Leifengta from the seventeenth century and Fang Chengpei’s play Leifengta from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Preliminary research suggests that the Tang legends recorded in the tenth century already provide ample room for gender experimentation: Li Huang tells a story of how a young man was bewitched by a white snake and as a consequence, his body melted into water and he died a horrible death; while Jiyi ji in the same Taiping guangji collection recounts how a young man clothed in white was discovered to be the snake who seduced the daughter of the family. White Snake’s gender ambiguity was a truly prominent feature of the early iterations of the tale. The transgressive spirit of the Tang legends is echoed in the post-modern revamping of the tales centered on Green Snake from the early 1990s onwards, recasting her as an androgynous female protagonist. The modernity of the Tang reminds us the importance of tracing gender transgressions in the early metamorphoses of the White Snake legend.

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