The Study Of Carnival Consciousness In Traditional New Year Prints

Traditional New Year prints are important parts of Chinese people’s daily life, which represent, the characteristics of regional culture, people’s aesthetic standards, culture psychology and life wisdom. Therefore, to understand each of the prints means to research the picture of people’s spirits. This dissertation aims to reveal the carnival consciousness embodied in the New Year prints, and to study the traditional culture context in which carnival consciousness exits and develops, through analyzing the art form and culture connotation of Taohuawu New Year prints. And the trend of the New Year prints’development in the modern society is discussed at last. In the dissertation, carnival consciousness means transcending the seriousness, rules, limit and authority in a delighted form.This dissertation consists of five chapters. Firstly, in the part of introduction, after a summary of the current research situation and research purpose of the New Year prints, there is an intensive demonstration of its definition and characteristics, which followed by a brief definition of its research area. In addition, Taohuawu New Year prints’ basic contents and regional culture characteristics are presented and discussed.The second chapter is discussions of carnival consciousness manifested in the art form of the New Year prints. There are three main art characteristics of the prints, which are jollification, transcendence and diversification. As a result, the prints keep a distance with the serious and limited reality and unitary voice of authority.The third chapter is discussions of carnival consciousness reflected in the culture connotation of the New Year prints in different themes. To be specific, narrative prints establish a folk word apart from the authority, where people occupy the dominating place. Auspicious prints satisfy people with all their life expectations which are hardly realized in the reality and embody the spirits of’alternation and renewal’. Beauty prints are the objects in males’gazing, and therefore in s certain extant, human nature constrained by feudal ethic is released. Genre prints satirize and challenge the authority in a humorous way, besides depicting the jubilant festival scenes. In conclusion, the prints transcend the doctrinal, authoritative, limited and serious reality in a delighted way and from different aspects. Compared with the west carnival culture, the carnival consciousness in the New Year prints is finite.The following chapter probes into the traditional culture context of the New Year prints. The New Year prints adopt the spirits including the carnival consciousness of festival culture in the visual way. The carnival spirit represents in three aspects as follows. Firstly, one purport of the festival is alternation and renewal, which means transiting from one state to another, equal to the spirit of the west carnival. In the second, in entertainment activities of the festival, people behave following the rules of games instead of the society, which brings people freedom and delight, equal to the aim of the west carnival. The last, the bounds between male and female disappear in the festival, and people return into themselves in a relatively nature way, which also is the signification of the carnival. Moreover, the specialty of Chinese carnival consciousness is influenced with traditional moderation ideology. At first, thoughts of ’alternation and renewal’in the New Year prints are rooted in the moderation thoughts of unification of people and nature. Secondly, transcendence of the New Year prints relates to experiential aesthetic mode which is reflected in the moderation thoughts. At last, the specialty of the carnival culture expresses the wisdom of moderation in the combination of reality and ideality. Therefore, carnival consciousness in the New Year prints happens and exits in the traditional culture context, where traditional festival is living space, moderation thoughts spirit space.The forth chapter is the thinking of development of traditional prints in modern context. It’s a fact that the meanings of traditional New Year prints change a lot, because of the change of the festival culture, moderation thoughts and carnival culture. Nowadays, we should promote the inheritance of traditional prints, not only the form, but also the carnival spirit.The last part is the supplementary discussion related to Chinese New Year prints. At the same time, the plan of further investigation is introduced at last as well.