Comparative Study Of The Drum Words Of 《Two Degrees Plum》 And Novel In Qing Dynasty

Two Degrees Plum is one piece of popular literary work which incorporates the battle of loyalty and evil with a love story. It spread the scope extensively and arose long ago. In the popular literature form of Two Degrees Plum, there are novel, drama, drum words, story-telling and so on. This article mainly involves the comparative study of the drum words in Two Degrees Plum and the form and content in novel.As one kind of reading material put in the writer's table-top, the novel's population only relied on engraved plate and written copy before the foreign chromolithography has not entered into Shanghai in the latter Qing dynasty. Therefore, its diffusion and circulation had certain limitations. By means of "drum words"(or was called "big drum","gushu""guerci",guci etc.), this is a kind of artistic form which was loved to see and hear by the public. The folk artists in the Ming and Qing times adapted the loyal, filial, honorable and righteous story of Two Degrees Plum for the drum words and added to their subjective thinking in order to talk and sing among the people. This kind of traditional entertainment involving talking and singing compared the table-top work in the Ming and Qing times to disseminate was more widespread and remote, even if these remote north villages and small towns and mountain village shack, also could heard the board rapped by drum and the intense melody of an aria. Those entertainers of drum words has cast their own thoughts and feelings in the content performance through their unique plain level dialect, simultaneously has also integrated their real understanding of life and happy ideal hope of the future rather than simply filling the form of drum words with the story content so as to survive on routine sings. After folk entertainer's again creation work, not only the character image was more vivid ful, but also the plot was more winding and changeable, moreover the entertainers led the ordinary populace into their seeming real life scene through their words and the simulation image, and caused the ordinary populace to have one kind of unconsciousness emotion sympathetic chord along with theirs laughter, anger, sorrow and happiness.But some of the oral artists' words were recorded by approaching the primitive form, which were mostly closed to the original thoughts and styles of the artists. Meanwhile there are still some records that were adapted by the writers after they had kept them. Although these texts originated from the oral artists, the writers had more or less integrated their own thoughts and styles into the texts.This article is a piece of research paper about the text of drum words, which were adapted from the novel story of Two Degrees Plum. That is to say, we could draw a conclusion through the comparison of different editions of drum words of Two Degrees Plum in Qing Dynasty Republic of China with the form, content and thought of novel, and the comparison of the form, content and thought with different editions of drum words. Our conclusion is that different type of edition of the drum words in latter Qing Dynasty times, which basically followed the traditional modes of past drum words from the formality, but the ideological content could directly reflect the vicissitudes of society and idea at that time with the times changed. The different types of texts of drum words had directly reflected the traditional entertainment involving talking and singing entertainer's thoughts (they represented the first floor people's thoughts at that time), and also had directly reflected the common and popular writers'thoughts from their adaptions(they represented at that time one kind of residential social stratum thought which increased sharply along with city expanded and resident social stratum population produced, and this thought also referred to one kind of thought after the chromolithography had entered into China in latter Qing dynasty, cultural printing propagation velocity sped up and drum words gradually became the ordinary resident's table-top reading material).This kind of thought produced along with the social vicissitudes, also impelled the entire society's forward development and the progress from the science and technology and the cultural domain. Extant Qing Dynasty CheWangfu quben—drum words of Two Degrees Plum and the Shanghai Lithography Publishing house publication Two Degrees Plum gu ci at the end of Qing Dynasty and the first years of Republic of China, whose difference with novel and their own difference, has been reflecting this fact.