Inquiry Into Innate Character Of Opera Theory During Ming Dynasty

In the history of classical Chinese literary criticism, Theory of innate character of opera is a crucial and complicated category because of its substantial theoretical content and distinct national style. It originated from the theory of poetry and literature, and prevailed in opera criticism. During the Ming dynasty(1368-1644), especially the middle and late period(1436-1644), it came into being a theoretical issue to which opera theorists commonly paid close attention. In summary, it involves multiple fields of opera substance and form, and owns wide theoretical content, therefore, generally speaking, seeking opera innate character is a gradual course that aesthetic idea of ancient tradition infiltrates into the realm of opera. What's more, its kernel justly lies in reconstruction about conception of distinguish types of classical Chinese opera.From vertically scanning, opera theory of innate character during the Ming dynasty experienced a discussed, developed and perfected proceed. Firstly, it began with Zhu quan's , which mainly discusses inner principles of opera innate character in the early of the Ming dynasty(1368-1435); secondly, it was instantly elucidated and deepened by the different theory of innate character of Li Kaixian, He Liangjun, Xu Wei, Wang Shizhen in the middle of the Ming dynasty(1436-1572); Finally, in the late of the Ming dynasty( 1573-1644) it was elaborated by Shen Jing and Tang Xianzu, and Wang Jide constructed it as an integrated system which could be understood, performed and prevailed.Horizontally, theory of innate character went through numerous controversies, briefly there were "famous opera controversy" on relation between opera linguistic resplendence and plainness, and "Yi and Fa controversy" on relation between content and form of opera. For opera theory of the Ming dynasty, these appeared a theoretical inclination to gradually synthesize. After that, theory of innate character basically became a stable, objective aesthetic category.The basic spirit of opera innate character of the Ming dynasty should be obvious, on the one hand, it links up "confusianism "and "sentiment" while confirming opera nature; on the other hand, it adopts "theory of decency" and "theory of feeling self-department" as its dualistic narrative method. Apart from these, indistinct, arguable, synthetic properties are also some focus that the thesis expounds. Moreover, the theory that was extremely systemized also concludes all the subjects with meaning of philosophy and aesthetics in the domain of classical opera theory, and deeply influential in producing and criticizing of the Qing dynasty.