The Double Sources of the Legend of the White Snake and Its Overseas Influences

Abstract

The study on sources of the Legend of the White Snake varies from scholar to scholar. It can be culturally related to the Chinese culture of evil spirits. Its elements were dispersedly shown in the Tang Legends and earlier Wei-Jin Mystery novels but never integrated into a complete story or text. Most scholars believe that the text of the White Snake was established in the script of Ming dynasty and developed in the opera of the Qing dynasty. There is a great difference between the text in Song and Ming dynasty and that in Qing dynasty and the source of the added plots such as “stealing a magical herb” and “The Leifeng Pagoda” are still needed to be under discussion. In this paper, the written texts in Three Words will be compared with the oral texts in Baixue Yiyin or other Chinese operas. These two sources are intertwined and resonated with each other in their development of the theme, the characteristic of white snake and the intention, and further reflect the contradiction between the imagination of the public and literary creation through multi- media retellings, and all of these further influence the spread of the Legend of the White Snake overseas.