A Comparison Between The Peony Pavilion And Romeo And Juliet From The Aspect Of Eastern And Western Cultures

At the end of16th century, the two most outstanding drama masters from East and West whose names are Tang Xianzu and William Shakespeare finished the immortal scripts of The Peony Pavilion and Romeo and Juliet in the world literature history, which sing the praises of love and the pursuit of freedom. There is a time lag of three years between the writing of the two dramas,both of which represent the great success of the Eastern and Western dramatic cultures. Though no same historical and cultural roots can be found between the two works, there are many qualities in common in the aspects of love chasing, personality liberation and the opposition of feudal ethic. According to these similarities, many results of the researches from academic circles basing on comparison of the two works have been springing up recent years. Generally speaking, those researches mainly focus on discussing the similarities and differences between the roles of Du Liniang and Juliet from multi-angles, but the comparative studies, as a whole, of the two works from the aspects of the thoughts of culture, the main characters, aesthetic of art and performances appreciation so as to promote the communications between the two different cultures and to wake up our national culture confidence and the sense of pride are still to be de deepened and systematized. This thesis puts the two works in cultural backgrounds in order to fully discuss the similarities and differences in the theme structure, the images, the philosophy of religions and the dramatic aesthetics between them, avoiding the solo interpretation of the texts.The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, the similarities and differences of roles in the two works are discussed. The comparison between Du Liniang and Juliet is mainly concentrated on to show the cultural characteristics of their personalities and affection, while the comparisons between Liu Mengmei and Romeo, Du Bao and Capulet, Chen Zuiliang and the Priest are also concerned. In the second chapter, the main ideas of the two works are analyzed. The effects of the different attitudes about life and death as well as dream consciousness on the writing of the two works are investigated from the aspect of religious philosophy. For the third chapter, the aesthetic concepts of the two works are talked about and the conclusions can be drawn out that though there are aesthetic differences of appreciation between the two works for the reason of distinct cultural backgrounds and each of them has unique way of expression, both of the great works test the old sayings "All roads lead to Rome" in their form of aesthetics.