Reading Tang Xian-zu in the late twentieth century: 'Yu-ming Tang Si Meng' ('The Four Dreams of Yu-ming Hall')

This dissertation is a critical reading of Tang Xian-zu (Tang Hsien-tsu) as a Nietzschean overman in light of Nietzsche's philosophy of ubermensch and his conception of tragedy, which emphasizes self-overcoming as a means of transcending individual illusion and conventional ideology. Yu-ming Tang Si Meng or The Four Dreams of Yu-ming Hall, as representative of Tang's dramatic art, will be analyzed as a whole to understand Tang's qing-zhi zhe xue as a philosophy of the transcendence of love. The analysis will demonstrate that this philosophy is the unifying theme of the four plays, but that it is defined and presented in different developmental stages from the first play to the fourth.; Individual plays will first be analyzed by an intertextual approach to reveal Tang's unconventional protests against the overbearing political authorities and social values of feudalism. The dramatic treatments, theatrical effects and thematic presentations will be discussed to demonstrate how Tang employs the lyrical potential of the classical Chinese drama to convey his philosophy. The developing themes with other relevant evidence will be explored to argue that Tang also gradually transcends his individual ideology, moving from the world view of a chivalrous Confucian to that of a Taoist artist. However, a semiotic feminist reading will show that Tang is subject to the patriarchal culture of sixteenth-century China.; Traditional Western theories of drama are integrated into the analysis, so are the Chinese literary traditions of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Because Chinese dramatic conventions do not fit neatly into the generic categories of comedy and tragedy, Tang's first two plays are treated as "tragicomedies of romantic love" and his last two plays as "comitragedies of enlightenment."...