A Study Of Meme In Feminist Adaptations Of Chekhov’s Three Sisters

Three Sisters,one of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s greatest plays,has received wide attention all over the world after its premiere at Moscow Art Theatre in 1901.This thesis,taking two feminist adaptations of Three Sisters,Crimes of the Heart by American playwright Beth Henley and The Break of Day by British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker,as a point of departure and employing Linda Hutcheon’s adaptation theory and Richard Dawkins’ concept of meme as its theoretical underpinnings,attempts to demonstrate that through creative even radical adaptations of memes in Three Sisters,Henley and Wertenbaker show their different interpretations of the classic,which bring to the fore two female playwrights’ trenchant insight into the predicaments of American and British women in life and career in the mid and late 20th century.Henley fiercely criticizes the violence and gender inequality in America in the 1970s while Wertenbaker conveys her regard to uncertain national identity and her vision of constructing a multicultural Britain in the 1990s through the discussion of female infertility.The thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter one serves as the background information,which starts with a sketch of the life trajectory of the playwrights and their writing careers.Then it reviews the studies on two adaptations respectively at home and abroad.Finally,it is a condensed synopsis of Linda Hutcheon’s adaptation theory and Richard Dawkins’ concept of meme,followed by the layout of the thesis.Chapter two concentrates on how intentionality shapes the propagation of memes,which is investigated from three aspects:political intention,cultural intention and personal intention,aiming to show two female playwrights’purposes of achieving agency in male-dominant theatre institution,promoting cultural capital in popular culture and making efforts to speak for women.Chapter three approaches the intertextuality of stories when memes are transported.The intertextual engagements are discussed through evolution of characters,decoding of image "Moscow",and revisitation of dramatic style,which reveal two female playwrights’profound perceptions of women’s lives in different societies,as well as their unique manners of dealing with human predicaments.Chapter four highlights the indigenization in adaptation.In the process of transmission,memes bear the marks of different contexts and correspondingly carry local peculiarities.Localizing respectively in Southern America in the 1970s and Britain in the 1990s,both adaptations exhibit their playwrights’ discernment of their societies.The fifth chapter is the conclusion part.