Chinese Style "Carnival" And Qing Dynasty

In this paper, the author applied the perspective of carnival to the storytelling research. That was to connect storytelling art with its place, folk humorous culture, common folk humorous arts, specific environment, mode of transmission and the audiences to rediscover cultural implication hidden in the storyteller humorous.The research was divided into three parts. The first part was to restore the cultural ecological environment of the storytelling, namely to comb folk carnival culture from folk carnival places and literature and art forms existed in carnival areas. The second part was to investigate the propagation fields to describe the carnival experience in the storytelling places. Storyteller, as a member of the folk carnival culture, is in folk humorous culture of China. It is full of laugh and carnival experience which breaks through the convention. The third part was about the storyteller humorous text analysis, namely literary standard research. But the evaluation standard adopted in this research was not originated from the level of art in orthodox literature, but rather through the storytelling witty gimmick to excavate its folk humorous culture tradition and its folk humorous way and technique in folk humorous art. And this kind of common proved that the literary form and style regulated by common folk cultural soil, common propagation relations, and common audience psychology. The demonstration logic for this paper was from culture to literature, from external to internal, and then inside to outside.The first part was to find the roots of Chinese carnival culture. Carnival is a word not common in the history of ancient book, but this does not mean the lacking of carnival. We can find many carnival spirit literature records which were not named with carnival. They are about the ancient Chinese people’s life, work, festivals, sacrifice, marriage, funeral and other customs. Through these records, we can feel the atmosphere of carnival culture. " La Ji" which was recorded in "Book of Rites-Jiaotesheng" was the earliest record. On the basis of abundant historical materials, we roughly outlined the carnival life of Chinese people as follow:it primarily replied to festivals where people (men and women) gathered to enjoy feast, sing, dance, acrobatics, and etc.Generally speaking, carnival is a group behavior which needs a place. That’s why Bakhtin listed "square" in the carnival theory as an important academic concept, considering square is the symbol of national carnival. The square is far away from official ideology. Various speech genres and parody literatures survived in the square are permeated with a witty humor, full of strong subversion and new vitality. Square provides a gathering space for the masses and the breeding soil for all kinds of folk literature and art, which helps folk culture to get right of speech. Although there is no so-called "city center square" in China as western cities’buildings, there is "Chinese" square full of folk literature and art.Though the palace courtyard square is close to the official consciousness and not belonging to the folk carnival, it lays a long tradition connection between square and acrobatics. The temple square, street plaza, playgrounds and commercial recreational places, teahouses are Chinese style’s folk squares. Though they are with different forms, they show a high degree of homogeneity on the cultural characteristics. Gathered in the square, people can feel physical and psychological relax with weaker feudal hierarchy sense. Different industries were gathered in the square, which meet people’s demands on material, information and energy. The tradition acrobatics competition stretches for thousands of years in China, which indicates that in Chinese people’s mind acrobatics is square. Acrobatics is a traditional folk culture with most lively and complicated parts, which become the most fertile soil to nourish the form of Chinese folk literature and art. It is the origin of Chinese folk literature. Folk rap and opera are gradually separated from the acrobatics, and form their independent art features and systems.For particular concern that carnival square is also the origin of laugh culture, where is permeated with joy atmosphere and witty humor style for all kinds of literary art. Bakhtin’s carnival theory is able to explain the causes reasonably. On one hand, people gathered in the square, weaker level gap ablation and equal interpersonal atmosphere make the communicator and audience feel relaxed and free. The nature of the transmission relationship influences the art form and style obviously. On the other hand, many performance art forms gathered in one square, which helped to provide the possibility for a variety of art forms to learn from each other. If taking both aspects into consideration, on the basis of same place, relationship and audience, different forms of art in square will present a relatively unified style, technique of expression, content theme and narration way. The similar literary forms and styles caused by the same material relationship may help to open a new perspective for us to understand mutual permeation phenomenon between opera and rap field.The second part was for analysis of carnival experience existed in storytelling fields. " Laugh " is the most iconic expression in storytelling fields, which is also the most externalization of the carnival experience and plays a special role in forming the carnival atmosphere. The carnival experience is rooted from another source-breaking regulations. The carnival spirit and folk standpoints shown in the storytelling fields can be fully manifested from the criticism in series official prohibitions and moral criticism. The three anti-regularity aspects of storytelling fields, such as collapse of hierarchy by gathering, attack of sexual morality and release of instinct by sexual contents, overturn and discussion and intervention of government affairs, highly showed people’s carnival awareness on criticizing official truth and expressing their willing by fully playing the role of folk oral literature. Carnival experience also includes the equality of public communication, high interaction, objection for the authority of the unilateral monologue and emphasis on individual value, which caused the mutual dependence and mutual activation between the individuals on the dialogue and communication.The third part was for the analysis of humorous factors in the text of storytelling, which was divided into four aspects as inside loud laugh, flower arrangement, carnivalism language and description of carnival folks in the text." Inside loud laugh" refers to the humorous factors implicated in the book’s characters and plots. The author mainly aimed at the humorous characters in the book. Every book has its own humorous figures which can be roughly divided into book rib, little witty, and witty orthodox characters. Book rib is the character with humorous features, which can be divided as comic heroes and witty clown. It is corresponding to the net and uglily of the drama.Along with the analysis, the author found that the book rib quite fit with Bakhtin’s description on medieval piazza’s carnival type. This connection precisely reflected the identified way for human to obtain joy, similarity of human thinking structure and undifferentiated feature on original impulse at a deeper level, namely folk ideology’s criticism & resist to official ideology and truth & betray awareness indicated in seemingly foolish behaviors and words rolled into one, which helped to release the impulse of ordinary people in the social ethics shackles and cause the resonance of the middle class and grassroots people, even as the object of empathy. Concerned for the little witty, it mainly begins from the description of physical defects and heterogeneous, which is usually correspond to little villain character in the drama. Though such kind of laugh and tease tastes vulgar and shallow, it represents the initial type of laugh and is one of the traditional jokes in Chinese history. It meets the appreciators’glory and pride. The third kind is the humor of orthodox, which remolds serious historical figures and big heroes with humorous character to eliminate the respect and fear from the people and make them enjoy the free feeling."Flower arrangement "is another form in storytelling art to build witty fun, which refers to the funny parts storytellers introduced from the books, equivalent to the gag of drama. This paper analyzed it from four aspects as jokes, usage of opera, humorous words, and lib jokes on site.Carnivalism language refers to the special form and style of the square words formed on the basis of free communication in the carnival square. Daily taboo was broken. Shouting, swear, vow, curse, all kinds of language and indecent language can be blurt out in this atmosphere. The language of storytelling presents such kind of characteristic. This paper analyzed it from two aspects of language game and indecent language.Abundant carnival folk descriptions showed on the storytelling texts were related to the festival square atmosphere. On the basis of different roles of these descriptions in narrative, this paper constituted one of the carnival features of storytelling art from four aspects:folks of carnival, mutual set off between humorous characterization and folks, participation of carnival and structure.In the process of text analysis, witty storytelling art content reflects the highly interactive feature with other forms of folk humorous literature and art, especially with opera, such as setting of witty character, the comic heroes in book rib, and witty clown were corresponding to the flower and military comedian in opera respectively, little witty was corresponding to clown in opera, common application of jokes in flower arrangement, usage of opera, language style and folks contents. The consistency of witty technique and style reflects the common nourishing of carnival culture.At the meantime,due to some differences on culture,tradition,national character,and etc.,Chinese "carnival" was with its unique features as limitation on camival,connotation on expression,flexibility on carnival styles and diversity on carnival places.