Abstract: | A note on translation, romanization, and the order of names -- Chapter 1. Introduction to the White Snake Legends -- Part 1. The White Snake at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Chapter 2. The White Snake Problem versus the White Snake Industry -- Chapter 3. The Fall of the Pagoda and the Rise of the White Snake -- Part 2. The Profound Humanity of the Nonhuman during the Cold War. Chapter 4. The White Snake Legend in Postwar Japanese Cinema -- Chapter 5. Reconfiguring the White Snake in Korean Cinema in an Inter-Asian Context -- Part 3. The Specter of the Past in Contemporary Popular Culture. Chapter 6. Reconfiguring the Legend in Mainland China and Hong Kong -- Chapter 7. The White Snake Legend in the United States in the Twenty-First Century -- Chapter 8. The Eternal Bodies of the White Snake "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 |
