Query To Ontology Of Chinese Classic Traditional Opera

Chinese classic traditional opera is a comprehensive art, consisting of music, literrature, dance, panting and aerobatic fighting. The respective status of all these artistic elements in the opera as a whole is just the crux to decide this art's nature.Wang Guowei, a modern scholar, defined the traditional opera in his Textual Research to Traditional Opera like this: "the traditional opera is to use songs and dance to tell stories" . In his another book, History ofTraditional Opera during Song and Yuan Dynasty, Wang Guowei Showed his opinion that "stories have become the major facter instead of songs and dance " since theemergence of Zaju, which is a sort of traditional opera in Yuan Dynasty. That proves Wang Guowei Summed up all the artistic elemnts into two bigger parts ( songs and dance, stories) to study the traditional opera's nature. As to the relationship between these two parts, WangGuowei defintely regarded stories as the dominance and purpose of traditional operas, songs and dance, in aminor position, only as the means to tell stories.In this thesis, the author favours Wong Guower's summary of all the artistic element, but can't agree tohis opinions that narrative element is the dominance oftraditional operas. In the aother's view, songs and music, which include literary creation and performance on the stage, are treally the soul and the most profound natureof Chinese classic traditional operas. The following is the process of exposition.In chapter one, beginning with the analysis of linguistic logic of Wang Guowei's definition about traditional operas, the author looks back upon the original meaning of "traditional operas" and illustrates that Wang Guowei's opinion to emphasize traditional opera''s narrative element doesn't correspond with. our forefathers'' view with, the emphasis on traditional operas'songs and music. Then the author cites Wang Guowei remark: "stories have become the major factor instead ofsongs and dance" since the emergence of Zaju in Yuan Dynasty, as the target for querying about Chinesetraditional opera ontology in the next chapters.In Chapter Two author chiefly probes into the serious imbalance in the criticism, of Chinese classic traditionalopera theories. And it expounds that the theory with the emphasis on songs and music appeared far before the one with the emphasis on narration , and the former is betterthan the latter in its development and perfection. He elaborates that our forefathers valued operas according to the good writing of songs.In chapter Three, about the creation of songs inChinese classic traditional operas, there are basically three schools as following: Pianqi, a style with peaceful rhymes and beautiful words Bense, a style withoutdecoration and GeLu, a style with particular formations and rules in the number of words and rhymes. On account of this, with typical examples of different schools, the author illustrates that Chinese ancient playwrights paid close attention to the creation of opera songs. Thecreation of opera songs became an approach for them to show literary talent, and merits, even parade theirknowledge it even broke of plots and characters and became an artistic pursuit independent from plots in operas.In Chapter Four the author aralyzes the manmade defects of opera's narrative factor in the source of themes and structure of plots, and emphasizes specially the historical fact that some traditional opera works themselves have no obvious plots.In the conclusion the author points out that the imbalance in the criticism of theories and the phenomenon of emphasizing "songs" instead of "stories " in the creative practice are just particular and typical manifestation of Chinese classic traditional opera's nature that "songs" are the dominance. Finally the author boldly predicts that the probe into the traditional opera ontology is valuable and helpful for us to inherit the precious artistic legacy chinese classic traditional operas and develep traditional operas in the future.