Absurdity And Reality: The Translation And Reception Of Edward Albee's Plays In China

Edward Albee, (1928-), the representative of American opera of the absurd, following Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, is American greatest contemporary dramatist. Up to now, Albee has written about 30 plays, among which there are 4 adaptations. He has won the Pulitzer prize three times, the Toni Award for best drama twice, the Best Drama Award three times and four Lifetime Achievement Awards, which lead to his important status in and influence on American drama circle. In view of the characteristic of absurdity in Albee's works, Albee was considered to be a writer of absurdism in Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd, so when Chinese readers and academic circle first got to know Albee, they generally placed him in the ranks of absurdism. Therefore, in the 1960s when Chinese readers and scholars for the first time learned about Albee, owing to the special environment of literary criticism at that time, as an absurdist playwright, Albee was always subject to criticism. Not until the end of the Cultural Revolution could the Chinese attitude toward Albee be changed. Since the 1960s, 7 works of Albee are translated and introduced to China, among which there are three works are performed on stage. This thesis focuses on analyzing The Zoo Story and Everything in the Garden that have been played in China, mainly adopts methods of text analysis and field investigation such as tele-interviewing the director, and discusses how China accepted Albee's drama from the perspective of stage adaptation. On such basis, the thesis explores the reasons for this particular approach to accepting it from the perspective of comparative literature and explores the relationship of world literature and national chatacter. This thesis is divided into six parts:The preface elaborates the relevant research status quo significance and value of the topic, and the research ideas and methods adopted by this thesis, etc.Chapter one covers Albee's translation and introduction in China from the 1960s to now, and emphasizes the two opposite attitudes towards Albee in China before and after Chinese New Period Literature, thus analyzes the cause of this attitude change, ushering in the characteristics of combining reality with absurdity in Albee's theatre of the absurd.Chapter two adopts the method of textual analysis and field survey, combining the theater performance in China, to focuses on the analysis of the two factors of reality and absurdity contained in The Zoo Story and Everything in the Garden, in order to reflect that Chinese readers and viewers totally have no difficulty in understanding the reality and absurdity in Albee's absurdism, and the adaptation China's stage has given to these two dramas in consideration of both reality and absurdity. All of these in order to reflect that Chinese readers and audiences decline to adapt Albee's absurdism.Chapter three attempts to explore why the drama combined with reality and absurdity became widely popular in China, and from which we can learn about the independent choices made by Chinese avant-garde drama in learning western absurdism from the aspect of the problems of Chinese society and the origin of Chinese and American theater.Conclusion part of this thesis summarizes the full thesis and explores the relationship of the world literature and the national literature.Appendixes of this thesis presents the translation and performance of Albee's plays in China and the email interview of the Chinese director of Everything in the Garden in 2011:Appendix 1:Catalogue of the translation and introduction of Albee's plays in China; Appendix 2:Catalogue of the stage performance of Albee's plays in China; Appendix 3:The email interview with the Chinese director of Everything in the Garden on November 24,2011.