| The first chapter discusses the inter-generational conflicts and the occurring of the modern Chinese tragedy in the nineteen twenties (referred to as the twenties). In the period of the cultural transformation, cultural issues and ethical issues became the major concerning of the Chinese modern drama. The traditional Chinese social character was tradition-oriented character, emphasizing the younger’s absolute submission to the elder. With the growing self-awareness in the early1920s, the younger generations who had modern personality were more inner-directed. They more emphasized the search for the inner self, the pursuit of individual rights and the way they behaved based on their inner needs. Due to the two old-and-new different moral concepts the elder and the younger had, the inter-generational conflicts in dramas of1920s actually are the conflicts between the old and new cultures and ethics. With the growing self-awareness, the possibility of failure of the younger’s struggle against the elder, a symbol of the deep-rooted traditional ethics gave rise to the growing awareness of Chinese modern tragedy. The tragedy, as a result of inter-generational conflicts, was the ethical and cultural tragedy. That is the unique characteristic of the Chinese contemporary tragedy different from the ancient Greek tragedy. Based on the mode of inter-generational conflict, the tragedy written in1920s reveals the contemporary cultural transformation at the time. The second chapter discusses the inter-generational conflicts and the aesthetic features of tragedies in1920s. The tragic figures, trying to get rid of the traditional culture, were rebellious and personalized new individuals. At that time, due to the influence of the Darwinism, the new youth was regarded as a hope of the society. However, the old forces were still so strong that the new hope was temporarily difficult to achieve, and the new group often was the victim of ineluctable fate of destruction, which enriches tragic connotation of the drama. The depiction of struggles and sufferings of the young generation and the absence of the pain of the elder demonstrate the superficiality of tragedies in1920s. From the perspective of the tragic conflict, tragedies in1920s often adopt dualistic patterns to set the characters’ action, according to conflicts between the young generation of modern personality and the elder of traditional personality. It reflects the conflicts of the two different cultures. In the latel920s, with the wave of the workers’movements, the conflicts between the young and the elder changed, which was not only embodied in ethnical and cultural conflicts but also in political and social conflicts. As regards the tragic ending, tragedies in1920s broke the pattern of the happy ending in classical Chinese dramas. With descriptions of struggles of the young against the elder, playwrights approved fearless pursuit of freedom and love of the young and criticized the hypocrisy and philistinism of conventional ethics, through picturing the destruction of valuable things. Tragedies in1920s thus were of profound significance in cultural criticism.The third chapter discusses the acceptance and criticism of tragedies inl920s. As the male and female yet could not be allowed to share the stage, the sense of reality of the stage performance was very limited. Moreover, the atmosphere of the theater was crowded and noisy, and under the influence of the traditional opera, audiences were hard of appreciating the contemporary tragedies. The bad theatric effect of drama The Bride ofJiao Zhongqing is an example. In addition, limited by the comprehension the audiences at that time, the entertainment of stories was still strongly needed, therefore, Chen Dabei advocated that the content of the scripts should have a certain significance, and the bizarre plots could not be completely denied. From one aspect, the high popularity of Miss Youlan at that time, and the interaction between the act and the comment is a good example. |
PDF Full Text Request