Allegory, Language Distinction, Artistic Atmosphere

Allegory, language distinction, artistic atmosphere are the three core categories of Chinese drama. Allegory occupies a position of the beginning and soul in the drama theory system as it expresses drama ideas, and embodies the viewpoints about the characteristics of drama genres, artistic properties, and functional value. Language distinction is a category about the form styles of Chinese drama, and manifests the characteristics of the genre forms of Chinese drama. Artistic atmosphere is at once a category of drama style and a category of creation, appreciation and criticism as it is the aesthetic convergence and the combination of aesthetic production and enjoyment.Both allegory and drama originated from the wizard and religious sacrifice ceremonies and emerged from the same cultural period switching from a witchcraft age to a history one, and so they possess something in common both in genre and spiritual temperament. This commonness serves as the basis of allegory' s becoming the core category to express drama ideas, creation spirit and artistic characteristics. As a means of theorizing and expressing, allegory implies with it the cultural message of the conflict and mergence of the wizard culture and the history culture. As Chinese drama inherited the material and spiritual characteristics of the monster-and-god culture of the wizard times, it was expelled from the orthodox culture by the history cultural authorities which despised it as "play" and so made it obliged to live and develop as folk culture for a long time. The appearance of the idea of drama allegory is the outcome of the participation in the drama creation by the elite class who represented the orthodox culture and reevaluated the so-called unorthodox folk drama culture, established and endowed the existential value and function of drama in the orthodox culture. The elite class fabled by drama, inherited and developed the cultural spiritual prototype of Zhuangzi' s allegory creation. The fact that Chinese drama developed in a folk cultural background and inherited more from the cultural material and spirit of the witchcraft age than from anything else also accounts for the formation of the allegorical characteristic of Chinese drama.Language distinction of drama was established first by the drama performance of actors in playhouses, so it is called " playhouse distinction" . The essential characteristics of language distinction don't exist in the surface of the drama language, but in its funniness-the aesthetic spirit of irony and wittiness, which is the manifestation of the viewpoint and tradition that drama is first and foremost for entertainment. The matter of language distinction is the necessary product of genre particularity of Chinese drama. As a developing notion, the formation and evolution of the notion of language distinction also reflect the aesthetic characteristics and the spirit of age in the different stages of the development of Chinese drama.Artistic atmosphere of drama is the aesthetic fruit of the artistic characteristic of drama which tells stories by play with music. Compared with the artistic atmosphere of poetry and Ci , the artistic atmosphere of drama is special for its concreteness , narrative, and characterization. As the pursued aesthetic target of the creation and appreciation of drama, the artistic atmosphere is the center of drama creation theories. The artistic atmosphere of drama innately implies the aestheticism of Chinese drama which translates life in an artistic way, fosters a moral and emotional life and manages to accomplish a kind of artistic life.Allegory, language distinction, artistic atmosphere make up the three main stays of the theory system of Chinese drama.