The Text Evolution And Cultural Connotation On Flower Drum Song-a Study On Comparing C.Y.Lee's Version And David Henry Hwang's Version

There are plenty of works which are written by Chinese American writers,adapted into film,television and drama,but it is relatively rare that Flower Drum Song is adapted so repeatedly.The original work,published in 1957,was originally adapted into the Broadway musical in 1958,and after about four decades,another adapted musical appeared in 2002.Not only did the original work,musicals and movies obtain salient achievements in their fields,but they also caused a huge impact.On account of the diversification of its textual forms in evolution and its authors' ethnic identity,the creation of Flower Drum Song's adaption is to be a cultural imagination containing areas in cross-art,cross-ethnic,cross-culture and cross-language.The thesis aims at making comparisons between the original work(written by Chin Yang Lee in 1957)and the adapted musical(adapted by David Henry Hwang in 2002)to explore the cultural connotations within the textual evolution.In the introduction,there are some relevant researches which include the contents of arranging the previous researches and defining some relevant concepts.The text consists of four chapters.Chapter one,in accordance with the chronological order,portrays the evolution of Flower Drum Song's textual creation and reveals the development from its versions of novels,musicals and movies till Hwang's adapted musical.The second chapter focuses on the differences of the narrative content between Lee's version and Hwang's version from three aspects,plot changes,image creation and theme changes.Chapter three is to compare and conclude three symbols in common in two texts(Lee's version and Hwang's version),including flower drum and flower drum song,theater and nightclubs as well as food and costumes to explore how characters' identities are strengthened through the symbols or images in Chinatown,and to study on how the conflicts and controversies are shown in the description of Chinatown,thus to analyze its deep cultural connotation.Aiming at making summary and sublimation of the preceding research,chapter four mainly presents Lee's and Hwang's writing skills and analyzes the text through two aspects including Chinese culture and cultural China,and identity disturbance and identity construction.Both of them have dual experiences in textual writing,which makes the characters be filled with meanings,not only with the important and original Chinese background,or the fresh American background,but also the new-born special background in the miscellaneous cultural circle.From the evolution of FlowerDrum Song,it is obvious that with cultural identity changes the changes of times and material conditions.With the miscellaneous backgrounds of Hwang,his adoption removes the binary opposition of Chinese and western culture,which is caused by identical selection in Lee's version.Similarly,Hwang's version reveals the complexes of gender,race and cultural identity through the cultural collisions and exchanges of multi-culture to rebuild a kind of new cultural identity.