Variations in Image, Gender, and Power: A Study of Madame Butterfly and M. Butterfly from the Perspective of the Variation Theory of Comparative Literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54691/ehswgq32Keywords:
The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature, image, Orientalism.Abstract
The famous Italian composer Giacomo Puccini wrote the opera Madama Butterfly in 1904, which is widely circulated today. M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang which is embedded in the former is a variation of Madame Butterfly, full of political metaphors. This paper uses the theory of variation to analyze the “Butterfly image” in the eyes of Westerners as “otherness”, discusses how and why the changes between the two, and reveals the hidden sexism and Western-centrism.
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[1] Cao, S. Q: The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature (Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin 2013), p. 193.
[2] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 10.
[3] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 31.
[4] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 39.
[5] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 82-83.
[6] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 93.
[7] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 96.
[8] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989),p. 45.
[9] SAID E W: Orientalism (Penguin Books, London 2003), p. 3.
[10] Cao, S. Q: The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature (Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin 2013) , p. 190.
[11] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 100.
[12] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 17.
[13] Hwang, David Henry: M. Butterfly (the Penguin Group, New York 1989), p. 182.
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