Madame Butterfly and a Japanese Nightingale: Two Orientalist Texts [Paperback]

Maureen Honey (Editor), Jean Lee Cole (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Madame Butterfly (1898) and A Japanese Nightingale (1901) both appeared at the height of American fascination with Japanese culture. These two novellas are paired here together for the first time to show how they defined and redefined contemporary misconceptions of the "Orient." This is the first reprinting of A Japanese Nightingale since its 1901 appearance, when it propelled Winnifred Eaton (using the pseudonym Onoto Watanna) to fame. John Luther Long's Madame Butterfly introduced American readers to the figure of the tragic geisha who falls in love with, and is then rejected by, a dashing American man; the opera Puccini based upon this work continues to enthrall audiences worldwide. Although Long emphasized the insensitivity of Westerners in their dealings with Asian people, the ever-faithful Cho-Cho-San typified Asian subservience and Western dominance. A Japanese Nightingale takes Long's revision several steps further. Eaton's heroine is powerful in her own right and is loved on her own terms. A Japanese Nightingale is also significant for its hidden personal nature. Although Eaton's pen name implied she was Japanese, she was, in fact, of Chinese descent. Living in a society that was virulently anti-Chinese, she used a Japanese screen for her own problematic identity, and A Japanese Nightingale tells us as much about the author's struggle to embrace her Asian heritage as it does about the stereotypes she contests.

About the Author

Maureen Honey is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She is the author of Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II and the editor or coeditor of several literary collections, the latest of which is Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology (Rutgers University Press, coedited with Venetria K. Patton). Jean Lee Cole is an assistant professor of English at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of The Literary Voices of Winnifred Eaton: Redefining Ethnicity and Authenticity (Rutgers University Press).

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813530636
• ISBN-13: 978-0813530635
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,290,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Polar Opposites!, February 2, 2009

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C. Vance "CollegeGrrl" (Shelby, AL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Madame Butterfly and a Japanese Nightingale: Two Orientalist Texts (Paperback)

These two novels are amazing when you look at them from the perspective of the time and surrounded by racial tensions. Both are uniquely interesting but the truly fascinating part is when you read them as a comparison treatment of Japan and Japanese women and culture, and the perceptions of the male protagonists.