Realistic Drama Forms Of Modern Change

Emerging in the 1970s as the outset of modern drama, the movement of Realistic Drama in Europe plays the vanguard role in the evolution of western drama from traditional phase to the modern one. Realistic drama has, on the one hand, preserved the Aristotelian dramatic form since Ancient Greek time, and reformed the traditional drama to adapt it to modern development on the other hand. This reformation was typically embodied in Ibsen's and Chekhov's dramas. The thesis aims to explore the modern reformation of realistic drama, holding that the demands for expressing modern content were the momentum of the reformation. The rational of the thesis is based on the dialectic relation between content and form. With Ibsen's middle and later plays and four major multiple-act plays of Chekhov as its text-analysis objects, the thesis is divided into six parts.The introduction part shows the objects and methods of the research. It firstly profiles the reformation process of realistic drama and gives a brief statement of the research status related to this topic home and abroad. Secondly, it expounds on the two theoretical starting points of the thesis: one is to explain the relation between dramatic form and dramaticism in terms of action organization principles; the other is to argue that the change of dramatic form was rooted in the dialectic relation between content and form.The first chapter makes an analysis of the first realistic drama type– Social Problem Plays. It firstly discusses the forming process of Social Problem Plays, and then describes and analyzes the modern content as well as its traditional form of"Unity of Action", pointing out that it was but a temporary combining relation during the transitional phase from tradition to modernity.The second chapter, a transitional part, holds that the modernity inspired the demands for expressing internal contents, but the demands were in the conflict with the principles of traditional drama style. Therefore, it became an urge to reform the pattern of realistic drama.The third and fourth chapters are the key parts, in which the author discusses the different resolutions Ibsen and Chekhov had found for the problems raised by modern reformation of drama pattern. Both chapters give an analysis of the internal lyric theme of drama at the beginning, and then points out that later Ibsen kept the traditional form of"Unity of Action"to achieve the narrative goal of the drama, and combined it with the artistic means of symbolism to refer to internality, achieving the lyric goal. Chekhov, on the other hand, gave up the principle of"Unity of Action"and created a new"Unity of Impression"principle instead so as to resolve narrativeness into lyricism. At the end of both Chapter Three and Four, the author makes an analysis of how the two forms accomplished the goal of expressing modern content respectively after the reformation, using Hedda gabler and The Three Sisters as examples.The concluding part makes a brief statement over the development of realistic drama in 20th century, pointing out that Ibsen and Chekhov had exerted great influence on modern western drama, on which a concluding comparison between the dramas of these two is made here.