The Nobel Prizewinner Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) wrote in Bengali and translated his own poems into English. Rabindranath's work in Bengali revolutionized the indigenous literary tradition, but little or none of his Bengali style is visible in the translations he produced for an English audience. He addressed a different reader when writing for the English, and an audience that he understood in a specific way because of the Anglo-Indian colonial context and the image that it presented of English language and its culture. Rabindranath had two distinct aesthetic and cultural ideologies, and he was aware of the radical split in this understanding of the Other, or of the British colonial presence in India. The present study examines the way that this ambivalence in comprehending the motivations of the colonizers was created and manipulated by colonial policies. Like many others of his generation, Rabindranath Tagore believed in the "ideal" presence of the English as it was represented in English literature. This faith generated a perception of two distinct kinds of English: the "petty" and the "great." While translating, he had in mind the constituency of the "great" English who formed an ideal world of culture. Towards the end of his life, he became disillusioned with the deceptive cultural transactions implied in colonial poetics.

This dissertation centers on the theme of "the woman warrior," historically grounded in premodern Chinese culture and represented in contemporary Asian American literature as well as in visual art forms. I apply a historical perspective to this interdisciplinary project in order to examine the global evolvement of one particular woman warrior, Mulan's legend, starting from the Northern Dynasties (386-581 A.D.) until the beginning of the twentieth-first century. This work conceptualizes the transmission and transformation of Mulan's story as a palimpsest, thereby highlighting the enduring interplay of continuity and erasure in the construction of her tale in China and the United States. The thesis investigates what the development of her tale reveals to us not only about womanhood, heroism, filial piety, and loyalty in premodern China but also about the construction of female agency, ethnic identity, and cultural origin in contemporary Asian America. Contextualizing Mulan alongside other heroines in premodern China my discussion considers the woman warrior as a paradigm of women warriors at large, thereby addressing Mulan as a culturally and historically rooted image coming out of a fascinating typology rather than as a singular character. Through the phenomenal example of Mulan this dissertation explores representations of female identity in the complex and frequent negotiation between womanhood and warrior value in premodern Chinese society, thus contributing to the current discussion on transnational feminism. By way of scrutinizing the multiplicity and complexity characterizing the "origin" of this particular figure, my research complicates the debate on cultural authenticity in the context of Asian America and the Asian diaspora. By looking at Mulan as a character claimed by various regions in China as their local heroine, the discussion deconstructs the monolithic "China" in Chinese America, and by extension, that of the "Asia" in Asian America. Through examining Mulan as a cross-cultural palimpsest, I hope to broaden our understanding of the interrelations between cultural heritage, gender politics, and ethnicity as exemplified by the global journey of her story and to inspire further scholarly engagement with her warrior sisters in Chinese as well as other cultures.

Earlier scholars have made some unsubstantiated comments about similarities between Chinese Yuan and English Renaissance theaters. The present comparative study explores the significant similarities and differences between these two theaters. The two theaters are shown to be strikingly similar in the theatrical conventions they employ. We see similarities between these two theaters in crucial aspects. Both were open theaters with a bare stage surrounded by the audience on at least three sides. Both stages lacked scenery and used portable properties transported by stage hands. Audience were equally noisy. The players, clad in magnificent costumes, were flexible and skillful in acting, singing, dancing, and tumbling. They spoke, chanted, or sang in both prose and verse forms. They also followed similar procedures in their presentation. These areas of similarity required players of both theaters to act with a theatricality or stylization. In this study, I have applied the approaches taken by the scholars of English Renaissance theater to the study of Chinese Yuan theater. This has enabled me to explore some areas that scholars on Yuan theater have not touched. This synchronic comparison of two theatrical conventions bearing no traces of mutual influence also shows that, given similar historic, economic and social soils, people in different civilizations will bring similar flowers to bloom.