A Study On The Story Pattern Of Yuan

Yuan drama is the most outstanding genre of literature in the Yuan Dynasty. However, several plays and some paragraphs are quite similar to each other. The cause of this phenomenon is that Chinese classical opera emphasis on lyricism and song lyrics, but underestimates narrative and dialogues. The authors of the Yuan drama are accustomed to imitate the successful plays rather than innovate in plot and structure. It is implied that a basic popular story pattern is existed in Yuan drama. Maybe the authors were learning from the typical works of the same themes at the beginning, and following the certain story pattern to write a play consciously or unconsciously. The reason of doing so is to guarantee the success of a play for the audiences in the theater. These potential story patterns played important roles in Yuan drama, like the same roles the tune was playing in song lyrics.Though there were narrative theories in Chinese classic criticism of literature, those criticisms were rarely aimed at potential story patterns. They usually focused on several certain plays only, such as The Romance of West Chamber, in forms of head notes and critical notes. And we either can easily use conclusions from modern western plot theory and narrative theory on Yuan drama. It is better to learn from western theory rather than use them mechanically.This dissertation is trying to combine Chinese classic criticism of literature, such as The Twelve Categories of Yuan drama, with ideas from western theory of literature, and is studying on a hundred plays from the Anthology of Yuan drama of Zang Maoxun. Through the ways of generalizing, systematizing and refining, six basic story patterns are raised in this dissertation. They are Taoism drama, Love drama, A-legal-case drama, Moral drama, History drama and Outlaws drama. Some typical plays are chosen in each category to illustrate the general story pattern, and special plays are chosen to illustrate the variant. So each play can be identified in certain story pattern through this coordinate. It is a new perspective to understand the producing, inheriting and improving of Yuan drama.