Yuan Dynasty Cultural Studies

At the early 20^th century,Wang Guowei's A Historical Study of the Drama in the Song and Yuan Dynasties started the research into Yuan drama.Through the efforts of several generations in the 20^th century,plentiful and substantial achievements have been gained whether in the basic researches into the arrangements of the list of dramas,the textual criticism of the dramatists,the history of Yuan dramas and so on or in the in-depth researches into sociology,folklore,etymology,culturology,art science and so on.The author,based on the study of the above achievements,after recarding,analyzing and studying Yuan drama and comparing it with the contents and forms concerning the elements of dramas before and after it,combining with cultural features of that time,has formed her own viewpoints gradually and embodied them into this dissertation.This dissertation is divided into five chapters.The first chapter.As to the issue why Yuan drama appeared and boomed in Yuan dynasty, the dissertation elaborated the formation and the particular historical and cultural background of Yuan drama through three stages after comparative studies.First,the author thinks that the Chinese culture in the ancient times had already had the elements of drama,but they didn't develop into drama in the true meaning after undergoing the changes of dynasties such as the Pre-Qin Period,the two Han Period,Wei,Jin,Southern and Northern Dynasties,Sui,Tang, and so on,which was closely related to the influence of its culture.The cultural features of this period can be briefly summarized as the interactions of the contention of a hundred schools of thought and the confinement of courtesy and music.Therefore,on one hand,the elements of drama in the early times couldn't develop into true drama due to the severe restraint of the concept of courtesy and music,on the other hand,the contention and ideological emancipation took place by turn continually,which cultivated plenty of key elements of drama such as song and dance,xinong,miscellaneous arts,recital,and so on. Second,Mongolians of Yuan went south into the Central Plains,so with the multi-national inhabitation and fusion,their cultural ideology must deviate during the crash,communication and fusion so as to produce new cultural ideology and new ideological system gradually.The ideology and culture of the whole society of Yuan dynasty were in a state of multiple blending between nomadism civilization and agriculture civilization,northern culture and southern culture,refined culture and popular culture,therefore,drama had new surviving soil,drama performance leaped from the unprivileged activities to the art that all the communitarians accepted and loved.Yuan drama had become a kind of popular art and the scholars took part in the composition of the drama directly,which elevated the composing level of this new art and pushed it to a new stage,then made Yuan dynasty the first golden period of drama development in the history of China.Third,with the consolidation of Mongolian regime,it became more and more Chinesized,Confucian culture was focused on again,the governors of Yuan dynasty advocated vigorously Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism,feudal ethics prospered again,which led to the decay of aesthetic content and form of Yuan drama,as a result,the drama lost its particular flavor and vigor and stepped into decline.The second chapter.Through the rearrangement and analysis of Yuan drama and combining with the social situation of Yuan dynasty and the peculiar ideology of Yuan people, the author finds that the thoughts included in Yuan drama on hand(including those survived drama directories which plots can be inferred roughly) can be summarized as relationships, that is to say,the dramatists and the actors,facing the reality of the decaying courtesy and music,would bring to the perplexed and ignorant people the living wisdom-how to live better. In order to achieve this,they expounded all kinds of relations in people's life:first,as humans in the society,they would bear different social roles,so how to deal with and balance these relations under such different social roles was the big problem the dramatists and actors focused on.All the relations such as monarch and official,official and masses,familial relationship and so on were embodied in Yuan drama and branded with the culture of Yuan dynasty.Second,besides those who positively chose the official career,the other who put more emphasis on the internal calmness were Buddhists,Taoists and Confucian scholars who lived as recluse rendering in Yuan drama,whose thoughts also reflected the features of the culture of Yuan dynasty.Third,for those who didn't choose the official career and didn't want to live as recluse,living freely and comfortably was also a good existing condition.The third chapter.The artistic forms and somatotype formation of Yuan drama were the results of mature development and intersection fusion of diverse artistic forms of the previous generations.First,Chinese drama is different from ancient Greek play and Indian Sanskrit Drama,the latter featured in putting emphasis on narration,plots and conflict,while Chinese drama put emphasis on song,which was a new kind of poems for people to sing.Yuan people combined traditional poetry,especially Song Ci,with the popular music of that time, especially the music of the North minority;therefore,the Northern operas of Jin and Yuan dynasties came into being.Second,song and dance of the ancient times,sorcerers and sorceresses,comedians,spectacle and circus of Han dynasty,xinong of Tang dynasty,drama of Song dynasty and so on formed the feature of multiplicity of Yuan drama.Third,Chinese drama performed and narrated stories through the combination of librettos and declamation. This feature derived from ballad literature.Fourth,Yuan drama combined music with spectacle and circus,funning drama,dance,talking and singing,then formed the performing form of singing,acting,speaking and fighting.Literature integrated all these techniques and formed the features of Yuan drama.Its somatotype features embodied the unique aesthetic sight and taste of Yuan people.The formation of the forms of Yuan drama had formed under the influence and restrictions of the culture of Yuan dynasty.The audience was mainly the citizens.Influenced by the contemporary aesthetic background of the preference of being simple,natural and practical,they pursued simplicity and liveliness,appealing to all,the complete story full of wits.In order to satisfy the audience's sensory pleasure and spiritual demand,Yuan drama narrated and performed the complete story with its unique form.The fourth chapter.As a comprehensive art,the research into Yuan drama cannot be confined by text.As far as the stage is concerned,including play scripts,actors,theatres, performance and so on,it had been deeply branded with the commercial culture since Song and Yuan dynasties.First,the script of Yuan drama had the following features:many literati talents of guild of authors participating in it,collective writing,combination of actors and scholars successfully communicating literature and stage.Second,there were lots of professional and amateur actors together improved the communication and popularization of the drama.Third,the features of the theatres were closely related to the social status of the drama.The continual perfection of the theatres of Yuan dynasty showed the elevation of the social status of the drama.Fourth,the performance of Yuan drama was mainly embodied as pseudo-performance and drama series.The fifth chapter.The criticism of the newborn thing-Yuan drama by Yuan scholar was historical as well as nonse.On one hand,they improved its value from kinship and surveyed the dramatists and the functions of Yuan drama with the view of traditional historical essays and poetics.In the aspect of historical essays,the critics discussed the style evolving process from poems to dramas.In the aspect of function theory,the critics inherited the cognition and cultivation functions of poetry teaching,pointed out that Yuan drama could do good to the society.In the aspect of writing theory,they attached importance to the creation of music and stage lines and intended to approach the refined literature,Some of them even applied mechanically the concept of poetry to criticize drama,and published their views within sight, which promoted the establishment of the critical theories of drama.On the other hand,they could judge properly the performance effects of Yuan drama based on the present conditions. In the aspect of performing theory,there were more remarks on singing,the status of stage lines was given prominence too.In the aspect of the author theory,the critics treated the dramatists as scholars no matter whether their social status was high or low and fully affirmed their talent and creation.Conclusion.Yuan drama was the internal spiritual product moulded by the particular culture of Yuan dynasty.The culture of Yuan dynasty created the contents,forms, performance and criticism of Yuan drama.The culture,especially the ideological culture,was the backing of the prosperity of Yuan drama,which in turn reacted on the culture of Yuan dynasty and influenced the developing trend of it,which points out to us that the prosperity of a culture must have the equivalent cultural background.Only by knowing clearly its cultural demand and adjusting properly in different periods can we find the best way out.