On Reception Of Cao Yu's Drama In China

From 1933 to 1942, during the ten years, Cao Yu devoted four masterpieces to modern Chinese drama stage that were entitled Thunder, Sunrise, Champaign and Peking Man. Furthermore, there were some new tentative and creations about the realistic human life, human nature and the formation of drama in his each new works. It is because that Cao Yu was in pursuit of one kind of "greatly fusing" drama. Although Cao Yu's drama was a symbol of the maturity of modern Chinese drama stage, the significance not only consisted in that. It was more important that widen the field and vision.However, what exactly was Cao Yu such a courageously innovative and compatible style made his drama exceed the acceptance of the time. Therefore, there was a contradictive phenomenon that as a drama author he was popular with the receivers, on the other hand, he had to accept the most misunderstanding. The receivers communicated the most enthusiasm into reading, acting and applauding; at the same time ,misunderstood the drama because they had their own understanding.By carding the acceptance of drama Thunder and Sunrise throughout more than 70 years, this text focuses on a series of aspects as follow: Firstly, the receivers' comprehension how to return the original meaning of Thunder, secondly, the acts that had had to be splitted up restored the two dramas; thirdly, the two dramas successively adapted for TV series. Through the three aspects, we can draw a conclusion that the characteristic of the reception process, which went through from misunderstanding to comprehension gradually and that the receivers endowed with the newly cultural intension on the basis of the comprehension.It is surely that any phenomenon of the objective world has its rationality, and also has its original reason. The purpose of this text not only lies in the conclusion drew by carding the reception of the drama Thunder and Sunrise, but expects to search after whatever factors, which having had effected on the receivers, resulted in the characteristic of the reception process. In order to find out those factors, we attempt to discuss the thesis into two aspects—author and environment, receivers and reception environment—by the Anticipating Horizon of Reception Theory as well as the collective characteristic of Aesthetics Mentality and so on. By the aforesaid demonstrations in this text, we generalize that the characteristics of Chinese receivers is that as follow: reality of the Anticipating Horizon, integrality, intervention and loving happy ending, commiseration being different from the western receivers. With those conclusions above-mentioned we attempt to answer the reason that took on a contradictive phenomenon during the reception process of Cao Yu's drama.