From Stefan Zweig’s Novel Letter From An Unknown Woman To Xu Jinglei’s Film：The Structure Of Female Consciousness Between Western Modemity And The Chinese Context

In view of the intensified intercultural exchanges and cooperation,intercultural issues attract more and more attention in both films and in the progress of film production.More and more attempts are now being made to put literary works in a completely different cultural context.In this Master’s thesis,I will analyze the literary adaptation of Letter from an Unknown Woman by the Chinese director Xu Jinglei and deal with two issues,firstly,how the Western and Chinese cultural images are constructed in Xus Film and then in which relationship these cultural images are with the female consciousness of the unknown woman.Subsequently,I will take a look at the difficult situation of the unknown woman in the film,who tries to find for her own identity.This dilemma regarding the construction of female consciousness in Xu Jinglei’s filming is connected with the modern context of China and this connection will be further analyzed.In this way,I hope to offer new observational perspectives for intercultural cooperations in the film sector.In the introduction to the present work,an overview of Xu Jinglei’s literary criticism is given.This includes narrative analyzes of the Chinese film or of Xu’s literary film and also intercultural researches,which compares the western cultural image in the novel with the Chinese cultural image in Xus Film.Attention is drawn to the fact,that from an intercultural perspective some researches tend to presuppose the novel of Zweig as a western cultural entity and the film adaptation of Xu Jinglei as a Chinese cultural entity.Instead,I will deal with the Chinese modern context here in order to discuss the construction of the Chinese and Western cultural image in Xus Film.In the second chapter,I will analyze the three different narrative levels and different ways of focusing Xu’s film.Based on the narration theory of Genette,I try to explain that,through diminishing subjective observation situations and increasing objective observation situations,Xu’s film focuses firstly on the writer but later on the unknown woman.In the following chapter,with the help of the performative theory of Judith Butler,I will concentrate on the construction of a Western cultural image through the male figure in the film,and later I will try to analysis the close connection between this cultural image and the construction of the female consciousness of the unknown WomanIn the fourth chapter,the female consciousness of the unknown woman in Xu Jinglei’s film is characterized not only with certain self-confidence and certain independence.On the other hand,however,there is also a contradictory vacillating situation-this awareness is always based on the image of the male figure and can never be freed from the social influences.In this regard,I will continue to deal with the modernization process in China since the last century-from the mental liberation of women in the Fourth May movement,until the Mary Sue image in the flow of commercialization.Throughout the process,the development of female women’s consciousness in China is always lacking in its own independent discourse.From this perspective it can be seen how the cinematic representation of the unknown woman in Xu Jinglei’s literary film shows the resonance to the modern context of China.