Images of women in Ming (1368--1644) fiction: The femmes fatales in 'Sanyan Erpai'.

摘要

This thesis examines the femmes fatales in two Ming anthologies---Feng Menglong's Sanyan and Ling Mengchu's Erpai---by focusing centrally on their nature and retributions as illustrated through the contents.;By categorizing their fictional beings into three types, namely the dispositional, the situational, and the deviational based on their atypical thoughts and behaviors, I would like to show that femme fatale cannot be viewed solely in a wholistic manner; different categories reflect the proportionality of retribution. There are forty-two female characters from forty stories that can be addressed as femme fatales. I will adopt fifteen stories with seventeen femmes fatales for my analysis.;Chapter one is the background to the two anthologies, the femmes fatales and retributions. Chapter two provides an analysis of the three types of femme fatale. Chapter three is the synopses of the stories referred to in Chapter two.