A Study On The Chuanqi And Zaju During The Republic Of China

Based on the process of history and culture during the period of the Republic of China and the evolution of drama, the thesis selects Chuanqi and Zaju during the Republic of China as research objects. By excavating and collating new historical materials, the thesis tries to comprehensively investigates the development, change and decline of the Chuanqi and Zaju during this period. Mainly analyzing the ideological and artistic tendencies of important writers, themes, artistic style, inheritance and new change of script system during the different stages, the paper summarizes the value and status of the Chuanqi and Zaju of the Republic of China, reflecting their embarrassing situation in the drastic transformation of politics and culture.Therefore, this paper is divided into two parts.The upper part belongs to the ’history’ category, which takes the time as the line, and researching the evolution of the Chuanqi and Zaju during the Republic of China. It is divided into the following four chapters.The first chapter is an overview of the Chuanqi and Zaju, mainly focusing on two questions. One is to define Chuanqi and Zaju during the Republic of China from time, style and discipline angles, so as to further clarify the scope of the study. The other is to make statistics of Chuanqi and Zaju from the writer’s native distribution, age distribution, the works (published), the time distribution, geographical distribution and dissemination of works published angles, so as to grasp writers, works during the Republic of China as a whole.Chapter Two to Chapter Four take separately the early, middle and late Chuanqi and Zaju as the study objects, focusing on the analysis of development background different periods, and the external reasons of its prosperity and decline, combing the creating conditions of both the modern themes and traditional themes in each stage, particularly show the development of Chuanqi and Zaju during the Republic of China, and rules of thriving, fallow demise. This paper believes that the external factors which promote Chuanqi and Zaju moving mainly include the followings. The first reason is enlightenment from Liang Qi-chao and the revolution in fiction, the second one is the strong stimulation of modern presses, publishing industry and the cultural market, the third one is different types of the playwright’s encouragement, the fourth one is the changeable political situations and unprecedented national crisis. Besides internal factors such as drama’s quality and system, the external factors leading to the decline of Chuanqi and Zaju are roughly the followings. The first reason is staying away from the stage; the second one is the impact from the new literature and the modern drama, the third one is the dropping out of many writers, the fourth one is the alienation of modern presses, publishing industry and the cultural market. By combing the contents and themes of different periods, we can draw such a conclusion that facing the reality, serving readers, themes with modern time demands are the body of Chuanqi and Zaju, which are drama’s distinct characteristics of the Republic of China. Expressing emotions, entertaining themselves, keeping neither friendly nor aloof relationship with the demand of the times are important features of Chuanqi and Zaju during the Republic of China too. Comparing with the previous works, Chuanqi and Zaju in this period also have the corresponding time color. The next part belongs to the ’discussion’ category, which is to seize and discuss several key problems of the Chuanqi and Zaju’s development and demise process in detail, also including the study of the evaluation of its history and status in the history of literature. It is divided in five chapters.Chapter Five to Seven mainly focuses on the reporter writers, adherent writers and scholarly writers. By revealing their ideological trends, creation concepts, artistic contributions, and lessons, the thesis tries to reveal the rise and fall, the gain and loss of the Chuanqi and Zaju of the Republic of China from microcosmic point of view. Because of their different thoughts, experiences, careers and culture, the above three kind of writers, as the main part of the writer group, all have their own influence on the legend and drama writing to varying degrees, and leave different experience and enlightenments. The reporter writers play a leading part in the early period of the Republic of China. Under the influence of both political and market consciousness, their writings tend to focus on politics and cultural market. Although prolong the vitality of Chuanqi and Zaju and gain valuable artistic experience, reporter writers also overdraw life of legends and dramas for their flaws in thoughts, arts and forms. Also prosper in the early time, their unique growing-up environment and different life experiences together decide the old fogy thoughts in the works, which opposite to regime of the republic of China and the new culture. As for arts, the adherent works have many shortcomings in plots, figures and languages, for their tendencies to obvious literati and academic, which is the main reason of the decline. Scholar writers became the dominant force in the middle and later period of the Republic of China. Serious national crisis, special academic circumstances and solid music attainments make the scholar writers exclaim mentally to call for united efforts of people to solve the crisis. However, the scholar writers also take Chuanqi and Zaju as the vector of lyric and the platform of academic attempt, so their creating tendencies were distinct with reporter writers and adherent writers. As the most profound group on the artistic attainments, scholar writers created a number of good works which could survive both on the desk and on stage because of paying more attentions to melody, style, layout and other art factors, and then their creating had deep implications for exploring the developing direction of Chinese drama.By comparing dramas of three previous dynasties and that of Republic of China, the Chapter eight reveals heritages and changes in dramas’ content, art, form and system. It is found that writers in the Republic of China on the one hand succeeded and showed great passions in the traditional subject matters and themes, on the other hand, they also learned many creation experiences and contribute greatly to the various subject matters and themes. Based on the traditional creation arts, the Chuanqi and Zaju of Republic of China absorbed more modern time requirements in artistic features. What is more, the works involved both traditional and new features in plot arrangement, character creation, and language style. As for the script form, to succeed means to stick to drama characteristics. To change relatively means to break free and to explore a new path. As for Chuanqi and Zaju in this period, both success and change play extraordinary role in Chuanqi and Zaju in the Republic of China.In Chapter 9, on the one hand, the author places the Chuanqi and Zaju both in the Republic of China and the present, revealing their important historical and contemporary role; on the other hand, the author places Chuanqi and Zaju in drama history and literature field, summarizing the irreplaceable role in drama history and literature history. This paper believe that a variety of factors such as politics, economy, society, culture gestated by Chuanqi and Zaju as artistic achievement, Chuanqi and Zaju not only play an important role at that time, but also has an important reference value for understanding and esthetic. Comparing with the Chuanqi and Zaju in prosperity, works in this period also very dazzling. Based on the artistic contribution studied, this paper also analyzes Chuanqi and Zaju’s affects in drama history and literature history. It is believed that Chuanqi and Zaju in the Republic of China is a continuation of the previous, the end of drama history, a branch of drama in that period, and Chuanqi and Zaju build up literature system in the Republic of China with other literature styles.The rest part chooses the transformation of politics and culture as the entrance, comprehensively analyze some key problems, such as function orientation, creation technique, and spreading mode to explore and rethink the situation of the Chuanqi and Zaju during the Republic of China. This paper believes that in the transformation of politics and culture in the Republic of China, Chuanqi and Zaju can only be in a dilemma of choice, in any case, can not get rid of the decline fate.