| About the relationship between O'Neill's influence and Cao Yu's drama, there is a heavy dispute in the critical circle of both home and abroad, which roughly form two totally different views. One is the offensive "view of imitation". At the beginning period of research on Cao Yu, there has been the inference that all of Cao Yu's plays are "imitation" of western classic drama, especially those of O'Neill. In the environment of that time, imitating seemed to be suspected of plagiarizing, therefore, Cao Yu originally seldom mentioned the influence of O'Neill's drama.After the foundation of New China, because of the influence of ultra-left trend of thought, the repelling to European and American culture, comments on Cao Yu avoided any mentioning of western influence. After China's reform and opening up, scholars began to write papers on the relationship between O'Neill's influence and Cao Yu's drama. Although these papers were not as offensive as "view of imitation", they were still under the influence of "the theory of west-centralism" on the visual angle of research. Adopting the method of "influence comparison" and based on the case study of Cao Yu's play, most of these papers made the vertical comparison between western drama and Cao Yu's drama. One common characteristic of these papers is the focus on influencing and neglect of acceptance, i.e. neglect of cultural interaction and subjective initiative of the accepter.The other is the "view of melting", which first came from Cao Yu's own definition and has got support from many mainland critics. They affirmed Cao Yu's achievements on creative reference of foreign drama, and believed that "Cao Yu has perfectly "melted" foreign elements into our national works." "After that, without following the teachings of the deceased, Cao Yu began to draw nutrients in our old cultural tradition and made great achievements." "He takes root in China, judges and displays the world through the aesthetic eyes of Chinese nation." Actually the previous conclusions are also biased to some extent. First, Cao Yu's most influential works are still the three ones in his early creating period, and the drama plot and expression techniques of them bear obvious mark of imitating; Second, the drama thoughts, tragic consciousness etc fully expressed in his drama are beyond traditional Chinese culture; Besides, it's impossible to find prototype of Cao Yu's characters in traditional Chinese literature. Characters like Fan Yi, Zhou Chong, Qiu Hu and Jin Zi, all have strong desire and pursuit like the personages in western tragedy, and it's difficult to judge them with the moral standards of traditional Chinese culture.The dispute of these two views proposes an important subject for comparative literature: What is the focus of attention of comparative literature? What should be found through comparison? What does the conclusion explain? From the post-modernist visual angle, in the background of culturalglobalization and taking advantage of the otherness and uniqueness of comparing concrete literature texts, the research of this subject takes the comparison between O'Neill and Cao Yu as example, merges the methods of influence study and parallel study, reviews the mutual infiltration and influence of Chinese and western culture, and from the angle of acceptance, examines when a culture accepts the influence of another culture, how one culture chooses and transforms another and gives birth to a third one: a variant resulting from the collision and merging of these two cultures. Thus it helps to avoid the proof that one literature phenomenon belongs to both nation A and nation B through the simple collection of historical data about the mutual influence of Chinese and western literature and culture, or the mechanical mingling of similar phenomena from different nations, and helps to propose the analysis based on the comparison between concrete literature forms. Meanwhile, through the comparative study, this thesis tries to examine the law and approaches of mutual influence between different cultures, and explore positive and constructive methods for cultural influence and acceptance.This thesis consists of six parts including introduction and conclusion, and the four chapters are the main contents.Chapter One explains the comparability between Eugene O'Neill and Cao Yu. Although under the influence of many western writers, researchers still find that the connection between Cao Yu and O'Neill is comparable. O'Neill's personal experience and special fondness of Chinese culture have shortened the distance between him and Chinese literator, besides, O'Neill and Cao Yu have very similar life experience: They both grew up in disharmonious family and had equally miserable childhood; in the course of growing up, they were both enlightened by drama and developed strong interest in it when they were young; and in their respective creation careers, they happened to be under similar social and cultural background—the urgent need of realistic drama calls for the creating of dramatic works that truly reflect modern society and modern men. What's more important, the relation between O'Neill and Cao Yu is not at all the simple spreading and borrowing between different literatures. Under similar social background, their works have displayed common tragedy of the era. And it is the common aesthetic and artistic pursuit that links the two writers from different nations.Chapter Two compares the tragic views of O'Neill and Cao Yu. In the forming process of their tragic view, both of them have been influenced by ancient Greek tragedy and have inherited and developed the ancient Greek tragic view under respective historical and cultural background. Both of them are filled with sympathy to human nature and unceasingly exploring the mysterious force behind destiny; they have both done their utmost to annotate the real purpose, the loftiness and grandness oftragedy; they both pay attention to the spiritual crisis of modern men, announce the contradiction and conflict between illusion and reality, past and present, spirit and material, and examine the meaning and end-result of human life; and the works of both are pervaded with permanent pursuit of human ideal and ultimate care to human destiny. However, neither O'Neill nor Cao Yu simply imitates the ancient Greek tragedy; both of them creatively inherit and develop it with the integration of respective social and cultural background. In their own cultural land, they have merged their own exploration and thinking about modern society and endued their works with distinct spirit of time and feature of nation.Through the comparison of personages in O'Neill's and Cao Yu's drama, Chapter Three explains the important role of Freud's modern psychology principles in two writers' revealing of personage's inner world and different psychological display resulting from different cultural background. On O'Neill and Cao Yu, there are two different cultural speciality and connotation, which are especially displayed in the creation of tragic personage and the attitude towards them.Chapter Four compares the expressionist techniques and the artistic effect of modern tragedy of the two dramatists. Through the unique adoption of various expressionist techniques, O'Neill displays the desolation of human spirit and the painful loss of individual soul, besides, based on his own reflection of life and society, he also reveals the spiritual tragedy of modern men and the social and human root behind such tragedy from different angles. The profound implication of the subject and unique expression techniques in his works promote American drama to break away from the superficial and artificial tradition, and people begin to sense again the strong vitality of this old art, which makes O'Neill a milestone in American drama history. His many classic works, which have become the valuable treasures of American drama, have been exerting inestimable impact on dramatists for generations. The impact lies not only in his brilliant achievements, but also in his persistent spirit of exploring and reforming artistic techniques and creation subjects. And such spirit also exerts deep influence on Chinese dramatist Cao Yu. The tremendous charm of expressionism to Cao Yu mainly results from Cao Yu's aesthetic resonance and cultural echo from O'Neill's expressionist drama. And through the combination of expressionist techniques of drama and traditional techniques of Chinese drama, Cao Yu merges the idea of western modern drama and the essential elements of national drama and makes his own creation more appealing.Through comparing and proving, the thesis draws the following conclusions: 1. The great appeal of O'Neill to Cao Yu mainly results from their cultural and aesthetic resonance. However, because of the influence of different historical, social and cultural background, their creations bear obvious mark of their own culture. Through the comparison of these two dramatists' works, we may observe thedifference between eastern and western culture and its historical and social root. 2. Without the influence from western culture and western dramatists, it's impossible for Cao Yu to make such great achievements and to endue his drama profound and multiple connotation; Meanwhile, without thorough understanding of Chinese society and the profound background of Chinese culture, it's also impossible for him to create works that have deeply moved Chinese audience for generations. 3. Cao Yu's acceptance of O'Neill's influence is not at all unconditional "copying", it has experienced a complex process of choice and digestion. In this course, "glasses" of culture has played a tremendous role. 4.Because of the obturation of cultural expectation vision, people always take previous culture as Chinese culture, and do not admit that Chinese culture itself is also developing. Chinese culture, which has been developing and expanding all along, does not have unchangeable tradition. The "open" attitude towards foreign culture is the exhibition of national confidence and the inevitable attitude of a national culture which keeps developing and enriching itself. 5. Chinese culture often demonstrates the following law when accepting the influence of foreign culture: First, Chinese culture tends to accept the elements which are similar to or can be contained by itself and to repel the elements in conflict with itself. For example, most modern American drama that have been awarded grand prizes are about homosexual, which has little influence on Chinese drama and movie. While in Chinese culture, it's easy to find echoes of friendship and heroism expressed in western drama. Second, Chinese culture tends to accept concrete things instead of abstract ideas with philosophical arguments. For example, Chinese dramas seldom bear reflection of abstract life crisis and care about ultimate meaning. They mainly investigate human life state from the practical and sociological angle. Third, Chinese dramas give priority to audience at all times, therefore they satisfy the audience's expectation vision and appreciation habit as much as possible. Chinese dramas never consider whether they are written to read or written to play, therefore, at the use of writing skills such as expressionist skills, those techniques that are too deceitful and abstract have to be given up in order to keep the interest of audience. Through understanding the law of cultural restriction, we know that acceptance is never unchanged and indiscriminate; on the contrary, it's full of conflict, filtration, transform, deviation and even reconstruction. In this course, culture undoubtedly plays an essential role. Besides, the exploration and understanding of these laws are also helpful to our construction of theory about comparative literature, to the practice of comparative literature and to the research of Chinese modern and contemporary literature from the visual angle of acceptance.
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