Spewing The Reversion Of The Passion

Non-dramatic songs (sanqu) are free, simple and vigorous. With all these features, they add unique color to the Chinese poetry history. Suiting both refined and popular tastes, non-dramatic songs gain strong popularity among the Chinese peoples, reduce the distance between the classic literature and the popular literature. Being different from the traditional Chinese poetry and ci, non-dramatic songs have their own characters in the descriptions of love: bold, direct and vigorous. The traditional reservation and implication are not the main trend any more; the expression of feelings begin to break the rule of "driven by emotions and limited by ethics"; the female images are changed, besides dignified ladies, there are also bold and vigorous features. The non-dramatic songs are full of passions, which once appear in some works like The Book of Songs.The first part analyze the expression of passion in The Book of Songs, introduces the Confucianism's views on poetry and women. Influenced by the Confucianism, the reasonable tendency in the later poetry became stronger and stronger; the manner to express feelings was more and more obscure and tortuous. Ci, belonging to poetry in a broad sense, changed from frankness of the early stage to grace with the intervention of the intellectual, took advantage of a scene to express emotion, and held back words which sprang to lips; or applied metaphors and used things to imply feelings, and ardor in it waned.The second part, Passions in love non-dramatic songs emerge once again, which are presented in three aspects: seeking and expressing bravely for love, decision the heroines act with in emotional crises and description of sexual passions. In some of the Yuan songs, men take off the hypocritical moralistic mask. They express their love more freely, their voice become louder. This breaks through the traditional ways of expressing love and is the rebellion of the hypocritical moralistic image. Women show more confidence in the pursuit of love. They think bravely, speak directly and act vigorously, which break, through the traditional elegant and implicit female character in the poetry and exteriorize people's true feelings. The Yuan songs praise the love sincerely and hug the happiness brought by love bravely, which makes non-dramatic songs "the real emotional literature" that tell the truth and glitter the beauty of humanity.The third part analyzed the reasons for this return from three aspects: grassland culture, intellectual thoughts and aesthetic traditions. With the infusion of grassland culture, two kinds of culture came into collision and fusion, which changed the conception of women, marriage, ethics, moral principles and value of that time to some extent. With abolishing of imperial civil examination and lowering of their social standing, these intellectuals lived from affluence to the bottom of society and became one member of the social lower class. Some of them had to abandon their status as an intellectual to roam in marketplace, unworthily occupy a place in brothel, and indulge in sensual pleasures from non-dramatic songs as rakes. The environmental oppression made the rebellious thoughts of these intellectuals evoked. With the fusion of the challenge spirit in grassland culture, Yuan non-dramatic songs include more anti-tradition ones, which are more vigorous. Moreover, with the roles of aesthetic traditions in which gaudiness is regarded as beauty, love works in Yuan non-dramatic songs display spurting passion.