ISBN-13: 9781546616894 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 252 str.
ISBN-13: 9781546616894 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 252 str.
Full text. Pierre Loti's novel Madame Chrysantheme (1888) enjoyed great popularity during the author's lifetime, served as a source of Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, and remains in print to this day as a classic in Western literature. Loti's story, cast in the form of his fictionalized diary, describes the affair between a French naval officer and Chrysantheme, a temporary "bride" purchased in Nagasaki. More broadly, Loti's novel helped define the terms in which Occidentals perceived Japan as delicate, feminine, and, to use one of Loti's favorite words, "preposterous"-in short, ripe for exploitation.