Artistic Reflection On History

In the area under KMT rule during the anti-Japanese War, the historical drama on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a shinging artistic flower blossoming in the perilous artistic at the time ,which pushed the Chinese modern historical drama to the top of its development together with the drama on the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period and that on the Southern Ming Dynasty. A study of the historical drama on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the area under KMT rule during the anti-Japanese War is of great importance to the understanding of the development and evolution of the Chinese modem literature, and the Chinese modern historical drama hi particular. In the context of the development of the entire Chinese modem historical drama, considering the historical drama on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the area under KMT rule during the War of Resistance against Japan as an independent group of historical drama, this paper tries to probe into its origin, distinctive character, ideological and artistic style, etc, with an attempt to understand the peculiarities and background of its production and to analyxe and contrast its different aesthetic properties.To begin with, this paper tries to grasp the basic reasons for the production of the historical drama on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the areas under KMT rule hi terms of the three aspects of the special period of tune, social circumstances and the influence on the production of historical drama on the part of the public habits of appreciation and the personal experience of the playwrights concerned. As a form of literature, the historical drama on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had its special reason of generation, i.e. the special social reality then: The KMT reactionary regime with Jiang Jieshi as the head exercised fascist rule inside and national betrayal outside. As a result, the Chinese people as a whole were put on the edge of life and death and the broad masses of the people were thrown into an abyss of suffering. They were deprived of personal rights and freedom of speech. To struggle for existence, quite a number of writers in the area under KMT rule took up the weapon of historical drama so as to do away with all negative factors and historical degeneration. Their endeavor to take historical drama as a weapon was to fight tactfully and to satisfy the expectations of appreciation on the part of the broad audience. In addition, the inclination of production of those playwrights of historical drama on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was greatlyinfluenced by their various personal experences from childhood to adulthood, their structure of knowledge, their natural disposition, their interest and so on. These three aspects formed joint forces in pushing forward the generation of the historical drama on the Tainping Heavenly Kingdom. The analysis of generation of this paper is unfolded with the subjective and objective factors around the three aspects.Though the chronicle play of Taiping rebelling is particularly special, it still has common with other kinds of play. Then it is necessary for us to trace the orgins of the chronicle play of Taiping rebelling. The following essay, first of all, makes a brief introduction to the basic characters of chronicle play, trying to find out the new writing way of chronicle play. The characterics of chronicle play lie in drawing materials from history and expressing them hi artistic ways. Since the appearance of chronicle play, there exist two controversial viewpoint-the truth of history or truth of art-about the creating of chronicle play due to its characteristics. However,in reality, chronicle plays emphasizing on either of these two parts all are welcome by people, so it is quite acceptable for us to combine them appropriately in the creating of a chronicle play.In order to have a good understanding of a chronicle play, we'd better study its creating theory. Another part of ontology begins with the study of the themes of the chronicle play of Taiping rebellion, the subjective purpose of playwrigh...