A Study On The Intertextuality Between Language And Picture In The Peony Pavilion In The Late Ming Dynasty

During the Wanli to Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty,many illustrated books emerged from The Peony Pavilion with narrative,poetic and decorative stylistic characteristics of the illustrations.During this period,the intertextual relationship between language and picture in the book changed,in other words,the relationship between the illustrations of The Peony Pavilion and the opera text gradually drifted apart.In the late Wanli period,the Preface Edition of Hermit Shilin,the Wenlin Pavilion Edition and the Liang Taiqing Edition in the fifth year of Tianqi,the illustrators mostly chose the climactic moments and the moments that showed the characters’ personality to draw illustrations,so that the illustrations and the opera texts complemented and corroborated each other in a close intertextual relationship.However,in the Edition of Mao Clan in Wuxing during the Taichang period,the Liulangguan Edition during the Tianqi period,and the Pushuizhai Proofreading Edition during the Chongzhen period,the illustrators no longer drew illustrations based on the key or wonderful plots in the opera text,but according to the highly expressive compositions written on the illustrations;or they made the illustrations creatively without fully following the plot of opera text.As a result,the connection between the illustrations and the plot of opera text became very weak or even unrelated,showing a loose intertextual relationship between the two.The change in the intertextual relationship between the language and the picture of The Peony Pavilion in the late Ming Dynasty is closely related to the participation of the literati in book engraving and the reference of garden paintings and poetic paintings when drawing illustrations.Fundamentally,it is to cater to the literati’s aesthetic consciousness of nobleness and elegance,which is the most crucial reason.