Shifting Western Masculinity and a Vision of the Melancholy Orient: Pierre Loti’s Madame Prune

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초록

Loti’s La Troisieme Jeunesse de Madame Prune (1905, Madame Prune) is a much lesser-known work compared to Madame Chrysanthemum (1887), the progenitor of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly and the musical, Miss Saigon, that has evolved into one of the most iconic tragic interracial romances between a Western man and an Asian woman.
Unlike the success of Madame Chrysanthemum, Madame Prune has been neglected in academia mostly because of the popular misconception that it is only a sequel to and imitation of Madame Chrysanthemum. Madame Prune deserves more scholarly attention, however, since the very rare combination of narrative and travelogue reflects the changing climates in European intellectuals’ understanding of Japanism and offers a fascinating observation of the new dynamics between the East and the West at the turn of the twentieth century. More than anything else, Madame Prune represents the vivid picturesque historical moments of political conflict arising among East Asian countries, particularly the last Emperor of Chosun Dynasty deeply concerned about Japanese military ambition encroaching upon the Korean peninsula. This complex representational mode was made possible by Loti’s keen awareness of his ownself that had been drifted away from the masculine subject that he once created for the European public. Analyzing the late nineteenth century European representation of East Asian culture through the lens of the Western male author’s shifting gender politics, this paper aims to suggests that gay studies has not securely landed in mainstream masculinity studies and masculinity studies has not been extensively incorporated into mainstream literary studies either. This paper traces how the writer’s representational mode changes from one text to the other based on his identity politics and shifting masculinity, and also analyzes the changing climate of the European perception of East Asian contents. The fin de siècle exoticism did not manifest a monolithic pattern and the European intellectual’s changing attitude toward Japanism influenced Loti’s representation of the East Asian people, landscape, customs, and changing societies in his texts.

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