Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Epic

by Hongmei Sun

Overview

Able to shape-shift and ride the clouds, wielding a magic cudgel and playing tricks, Sun Wukong (aka Monkey or the Monkey King) first attained superstar status as the protagonist of the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) and lives on in literature and popular culture internationally. In this far-ranging study Hongmei Sun discusses the thousand-year evolution of this figure in imperial China and multimedia adaptations in Republican, Maoist, and post-socialist China and the United States, including the film Princess Iron Fan (1941), Maoist revolutionary operas, online creative writings influenced by Hong Kong film A Chinese Odyssey (1995), and Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese.

At the intersection of Chinese studies, Asian American studies, film studies, and translation and adaptation studies, Transforming Monkey provides a renewed understanding of the Monkey King character as a rebel and trickster, and demonstrates his impact on the Chinese self-conception of national identity as he travels through time and across borders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295743196
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	04/02/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hongmei Sun is assistant professor of modern and classical languages at George Mason University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3

1 Who Is Sun Wukong? The Image of the Monkey King in Journey to the West 15

2 The Transmutable Monkey: Between Theater and Fiction in Traditional China 36

3 From Trickster to Hero: National Mythmaking in Wartime and Maoist China 60

4 From Fighter to Lover: The Postsocialist Hero in the PRC and Hong Kong 91

5 Chronotope and Orientalism: Time Travel between China and America 119

6 Of Monkey, Human, and God: The Performance of Asian American Identity 135

Conclusion 169

Notes 175

Selected Bibliography 195

Index 215

What People are Saying About This

Carma Hinton

"Fun, sophisticated, insightful, Hongmei Sun’s exploration of contemporary lives of the Monkey King takes us on a journey across multiple borders, ultimately to a place within ourselves, where the multivalent primate lurks."

Carlos Rojas

"The first monograph in English to focus entirely on adaptations of the Journey to the West narrative. Its analysis is quite compelling."

Andrew Schonebaum

"A brilliant and entertaining revisioning of Sun Wukong. Transforming Monkey will be of use to readers interested in the performance of traditional literature, the formation of modern Chinese culture and media, and, simply to fans of Monkey."

Editorial Reviews

"A delightful work of literary history with the advantage of incorporating several media. . . . Sun’s study deploys the Monkey King to bridge the gap between classical and modern/contemporary literature in a way that allows students of traditional Chinese and modern popular literature and media to connect."

China Review International: A Journal of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in Chinese Studies

"[R]ecommend[ed]... as a contribution to the scholarly literature on European–Asian cultural interaction in an important period of modern history."

Asian Studies Review

"Sun’s well-executed book deserves the attention not only of the fans of the Monkey King, but also of those interested in the broad questions of the techniques, the status, and the implications of adaptation, rewriting, and representation more generally."

Journal of Asian Studies