A Study On You Tong

You Tong is a famous writer and dramatist in the early days of the Qing Dynasty. He has achieved remarkable success in various fields such as poetry, proses, ci and drama. It is significant and important to study You Tong, base on which not only can we get all-around detailed knowledge about You Tong himself, find out how individuals being influenced by the particular social atmosphere and cultural background of Qing Dynasty, but also we can know more about the social environment, activities of the literati and aesthetic fashion of that time.The dissertation includes two parts, the inner part is the individual study on You Tong, the outer part is a study extending from You Tong to the drama circle of Qing Dynasty, concentrating on the relationship between them. Different methods are adopted to expatiate these two parts, such as examing echoes between poems and history and combining micro- and macroscopic analysis, etc. There are five chapters in the inner part. The first chapter is a review of his life and his deeds, dealing with some biographical facts of You Tong, the second does textual research on You Tong's contact with different friends, the third recapitulates the works of You Tong, the fourth expounds You Tong's main literary idea, the fifth analyses You Tong's achievements on poems, proses and ci, which makes up a shortfall left by predecessor researchers.The outer part aims to introduce the characteristics of You Tong's dramas and paying certain attention to the drama creation, performance and aesthetic criticism on drama field of the Qing Dynasty as well. There are four chapters in this part. The sixth chapter comments on the storylines and literati-oriented tendency of You Tong's dramas. The seventh chapter analyses playwrights' activities about drama in the Qing Dynasty, correlative reasons and influences are also included. The eighth discusses the individualized tendency of Qing tsa-chu, Yu Tong as a typical instance, and analyses reasons for it. Chapter 9 ,by comparing the different comments on You Tong's and Li Yu's dramas, expounds the connotation of the aesthetic idea of "appreciating the elegant while depreciating the popular" , and how the idea comes into being and brings influences are unpuzzled later.The appendix is a chronological list showing the life-long deeds of You Tong.