On Ten Famous Chinese Classical Tragedies

The history of Chinese tragedies is long and can go back to ancient times. The happiness and sorrow described in the Book of Songs and the Songs of the South can be regarded as the origin of the Chinese classical tragedies: The tragedies that came out later are numerous and dazzling. Berceuse of the differences in natural environment and cultural background, there exist great differences between Chinese tragedies and western ones in the depiction of characters' personality, behavior, psychological activities and the arrangements of the climax and the ending of the play. All these reflect the differences between the Chinese people and the westerners in politics, economy, cultural tradition and moral standard, thus they demonstrate the aesthetic interest and charm, value orientation and national traits.This dissertation is divided into two parts. In Part One, the author makes a comparison between Chinese classical tragedies and western tragedies. Using ten famous Chinese classical tragedies and western classical tragedies by playwrights in ancient Greek and Shakespeare as examples which include four themes, namely revenge, lone, morality and politics, the author makes a detailed comparison between the characters' personality, behavior and moral standards in the Chinese and western tragedies with the different themes mentioned above and points out the different arrangement of the plot, the different structure and artistic style of the Chinese and western playwrights.Part Two deals with the national characteristics of Chinese classical tragedies. On the basis of the comparison made in Part I, the author believes that, due to the influence of the Confucian culture, the Chinese classical tragedies generally have the function of enlightment which encourages people to do good and punishes evil-doers. Most Chinese classical tragedies are reflections of sad people in times of disorder. These tragedies select materials from folk stories and display the vicissitudes of life of unimportant people. The conflicts of tragedies do not occur between individuals but between individuals and a certain group of people. These tragedies embody the strong spirit of realism and the pursuit of aesthetic style of the so—called "compromise and harmony".