ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on Bakhtinian¡¦s three approaches, chronotope, carnivalesque and heteroglossia in David Henry Hwang¡¦s M. Butterfly. Since it is released, most critics mainly emphasize on the relationship between Gallimard and Song Liling. Gay issue becomes an underlying theme when readers study this play. Therefore, my thesis, based on Mikhail Bakhtin¡¦s theory, will analyze the parodic functions produced by Hwang to oppose to the empirical ideology in Madame Butterfly. The introduction, Chapter one, begins with a short summary of M. Butterfly and an overview of the theoretical frame of Bakhtin¡¦s theory as well as an explanation of the connection between Bakhtinian approach and M. Butterfly. In Chapter two, I discuss how chronotope, time and space, affects Gallimard. Chronotope represents changing concepts that appear in different situations. From Gallimard¡¦s prison to Song Liling¡¦s apartment, each event is considered a crucial form-shaping ideology. Chapter three chiefly deals with Song Liling¡¦s transvestism and Bakhtin¡¦s carnivalesque. Song Liling, like a carnival clown, turns over the western authority by masquerading her/himself and brings forth the concept of equality of all races. Chapter four aims to manifest a multiple constructed society. Bakhtin¡¦s heteroglossia designates to destroy the unification and centralization that colonialists use to dominate the non-white. Heteroglossia helps reveal the centrifugal discourses saturated in the society to secure the oppressed voice in this play. In the concluding chapter, I reiterate the analysis of M. Butterfly and Bakhtin¡¦s three approaches as well as describe the consequence of western ideology.

Madame Butterfly is analyzed as a cultural icon. Puccini s Madaina Butterfly and the Butterfly icon, i.e. the submissive Oriental beauty who cannot live after her Western lover betrays her, permeate Western stereotypes of Eastern culture. Through this mindset, miscommunication develops. This concept was popularized in David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, which builds upon Puccini's opera. Through the character's misperceptions of each other, the opera's tragic ending is repeated in Hwang's play after the French diplomat Gallimard realizes that his ideal woman is actually a male spy. Traditions regarding homosexuality and cross-dressing help Song to create Gallimard's feminine ideal. The theater contributes through tan and onnagata roles where men are trained to create perfect feminine illusions. These stereotypes are problematic because they do not allow for the complexities that exist in the theater, on film, and in actual events. Through increased sensitivity and awareness, individuals can see past the stereotypes to see other's complexities. / Department of English

Adaptation Studies suffers from a deficiency in the study of black, brown, yellow, and red adaptive texts, adaptive actors, and their practices. Adaptive Acts intervenes in this Eurocentric discourse as a study of adaptation with a (queer) POC perspective. My dissertation reveals that artists of color (re)create texts via dynamic modes of adaptation such as hyper-literary allusion, the use of meta-narratives as framing devices, and on-site collaborative re-writes that speak to/from specific cultural discourses that Eurocentric models alone cannot account for. I examine multi-ethnic American adaptations to delineate the role of adaptation in the continuance of stories that contest dominant culture from marginalized perspectives. And I offer deep adaptive readings of multi-ethnic adaptations in order to answer questions such as: what happens when adaptations are created to remember, to heal, and to disrupt? How does adaptation, as a centuries-old mode of cultural production, bring to the center the voices of the doubly marginalized, particularly queers of color? The texts I examine as “adaptive acts” are radical, queer, push the boundaries of adaptation, and have not, up to this point, been given the adaptive attention I believe they merit. David Henry Hwang’s 1988 Tony award-winning play, M. Butterfly, is an adaptive critique of the textual history of Butterfly and questions the assumptions of the Orientalism that underpins the story, which causes his play to intersect with Pierre Loti’s 1887 novella, Madame Chrysanthéme, at a point of imperial queerness. Rodney Evans, whose 2004 film, Brother to Brother, is the first full-length film to tell the story of the black queer roots at the genesis of the Harlem Renaissance, uses adaptation as a story(re)telling mode that focalizes the “gay rebel of the Harlem Renaissance,” Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987), to Signify on issues of canonization, gate-keeping, mythologizing, and intracultural marginalization. My discussion of Sherman Alexie’s debut film, The Business of Fancydancing, is informed by my own work as an adaptive actor and showcases the power of adaptation in the activation of Native continuance as an inclusive adaptive practice that offers an opportunity for women and queers of color to amend the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene writer-director’s creative authority. Adaptive acts are not only documents, but they document movements, decisions, and sociocultural action. Adaptation Studies must take seriously the power and possibilities of “adaptive acts” and “adaptive actors” from the margins if the field is to expand—adapt—in response to this diversity of adaptive potential.