Research On Yang Jingxian And His Poetic Drama, Journey To The West

Yang Jingxian, a Chinese opera writer of Mongolian, is one of the most productive and important playwrights during Yuan and Ming Dynasty. His masterpiece, poetic drama, Journey to the West, is a master of the story Journey to the West and a landmark of the process of evolution in poetry, drama, and novel. It's a pity that Yang Jingxian and his Journey to the West are very few in a variety of literary history, and all his life is relatively vague. For the above, this thesis, Yang Jingxian and his Journey to the West as the research material, do research and demonstration on all Yang Jingxian's life and his Journey to the West, using textual research and textual criticism of Chinese ancient literature traditional text. It is divided into four chapters.Chapter One, based on the previous studies, researches on all Yang Jingxian's life, the story Journey to the West in itself and the versions of Journey to the West. In the part of all Yang Jingxian's life, mainly demonstrate his family name, style, death, and birthplace, as well as argue and clarify the existing academic theory about he is cultural spy. In the part of the story Journey to the West in itself, sorts out the sources of the story and traces its development. Yang Jingxian's poetic drama, Journey to the West, has different versions in circulation since produced, and this paper collects and sorts out several existing versions.Chapter Two, including four parts, mainly demonstrates ideological content, characters, and work structure in poetic drama, Journey to the west. In the last part, do comparative research on Tang Monk's westbound routes in history and in drama. In the ideological content, including four aspects, First, dilute religious and strengthen the spirit of participating in the social life; Second, bright entertainment, increase the significance of people; Third, anti-science, worship the spirit of the times; Fourth, personal cultivation methods. In the part of characters, demonstrates personality characteristics of the seven people, Chen Guangrui, Chen Guangrui's wife Ms Yin, Liu Hong, Xuanzang, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, Sha Monk, and do a comparative study of Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Monk's situation in different versions. In the part of structure, do deeply analyze and research on the play's great creative structure. In the part of westbound routes, mainly discusses routes in the play, do comparative study of Tang Monk's westbound routes in history, then finds their similarities and differences.Chapter Three, researches on the artistic features of poetic drama, Journey to the West, including three aspects:language arts, religious factors and descriptive methods. Language arts demonstrates nine aspects of artistic features in the play, allusion, antithesis, parallelism, rhetorical devices, a kind of rhetorical device which requires a sentence to begin with the word or phrase at the end of the previous sentence, hyperbole, rhyme, individual language, and foreshadowing. In this paper, religious factors refer to religious allusions and religious figures. Description methods involve the side of description, scene description, psychological description, and coincidental method.Chapter Four, demonstrate the research value, influence on drama and novel, and roles and contributions in spreading of the story Journey to the West in itself.Chinese culture is the multi-culture, which experienced many collision, communication, and integration in the long history, formed by all nations. Yang Jingxian, as a national minority playwright, his literary works and activities play a very good bridge on the exchange between the Han nationality and national minorities, meanwhile we study playwrights of the national minority and their works can facilitate our in-depth knowing and understanding of the national culture characteristics and the writers' styles in the minorities. Especially, in today's background of advocating a harmonious multi-ethnic family, minority writers' research becomes very necessary.