A Cultural Spirit And Aesthetic Interpretation Of Zaju Of The Yuan Dynasty

Zaju of the Yuan Dyanasty refers to a kind of drama appearing in the mid-13th century. It is based upon the zaju of Sung and Jin Dynasties and is a dramatic art genre which incorperates the art of discourse, music, song and dance. It symbolizes the maturity of Chinese drama and, consequently deserves an important position in the history Chinese drama. As the first plays of "telling stories with the song and dance", the Yuan zajus unfold a vivid panorama of the 13th and 14th centuries Chinese social life and portray a rich gallery of typical characters of the time and of high aesthetic value, thus they are regarded as " live cultural fossils of Yuan Dynasty" .In terms of artistic achievements, the Yuan zajus, together with the poetry of Tang Dynasty and ci of Sung, have greatly enriched Chinese lyric literature.Meantime, the Yuan zajus have helped the classic Chinese prose litrerature to achieve an unrecedented peak by the picturesque narrative style and spirit. By means of ontological intepretation, we will have a deeper understanding of the contemporary society; in return, examining the dramas from the aesthetic cultural perspective, we can discover more of the rich philosophical implication and aesthetic tendence.The present dissertation consists 6 chapters. Begining with defination of culture, the Chapter l,the Preface, discusses the foundmental spirit of traditional Chinese culture and cultural spirit and constructive of Chinese drama ,and shows the aesthetic significance for cultural intepretation of Yuan zaju. This part also explains the importance of the thesis. In Chapter 2,the author spends some efforts in investigating the cultural factors for the prosperity of Yuan zaju.This part explains why Chinese drama grows into maturity in Yuan Dynasty from the aspects of the conflict between the steppe nomadic culture and the central plains agrion culture contradicts;the social backgroundeach of blending of playwrights with actorsjthe open, free and multicultural environment; and the development of drama art itself etc. Chapter 3 devotes to the study of anti-traditional spirits of Yuan zaju with Yuan Qu as the dominating art form. The chapter attempts to examine the breakaway of Yuan qu from the Chinese traditional literary concept from the long history of the Chinese literary concept.Chapter 4 analyses from the cultural angle the Yuan zajus of love-and-marriage,which roughly take up 1/4of the whole,with the famous The Story of the Western Chamber as an example so as to find out the discrepancies and similarities between Yuan zajus of love-and-marriage and the traditional dramas of the same subject-matter.The observation covers dramas of love and marriage between scholar and beauty, young man and prostitute .supernature beings and human beings ,and also dramas of love betroyal.Chapter 5 analyses dramas of Taoist fairies from the desperate psychology of the Yuanplaywrights who abandon Confucius philosophy and resort to Taoism.In the personality construction of the traditional scholars, the Confuscius spirit and Taoist spirit are complentary; the Confucius aspect of personality makes them positive toward life time, whereas the Taoist console them when their ideals fail to come true.The Yuan dramas of Taoist fairies immortal exactly reveal this helpless choice.Chapter 6 is to interpret history plays from cultural aspect .Among Yuan zajus are a number of history plays, so,to begin with, the thesis traces the origin of the extant 162 kinds of Yuan zaju and defines history plays.Then the part demonstrates that the history plays are to display the emotions of the dramatists by history,i.e,to reveal reality by writing about history.Upon this analysis, the author offers the causes for the posperity of Yuan history zajus. The history plays are to express the writer's patriotism by the description of a brokenup country,to sing for heroism or to exhibit the psychological growth of the artists.Finally, this part compares Yuan zaju ,the foundmental works of Chinese drama ,with The Historical Records , the monumental of...