Female Characters In The Story Of "The Orphan Of Zhao" And Their Images In Modern Artistic Forms

The Orphan of Zhao is originated from the historical records in Zuozhuan and Shiji,and has experienced adaptions in various Chinese literary genres and local drama styles,including historical novel,dramas in Song and Yuan Dynasties,Zaju,Chuanqi play,Peking opera,Shaanxi opera,and so on.Modern forms of drama and film,such as stage play,opera,film,TV series,and musical etc.,keep on exploring in the interpretation of this classical tragedy.At the same time,as one of the earliest Chinese traditional dramas that spread in the west,Orphan of Zhao has witnessed a variety of translation,adaptation and rehearsal works during the process of overseas communication,and been active in Western stage till today.Academic study pays little attention to the female roles of this story.However,those female roles has changed greatly in terms of characters,moral evaluation,personal fate along with the dissemination and acceptance history,and posed important influence on the structure and the tragic effect of the story.The introduction part summarizes the diachronic evolution of the Orphan of Zhao,and also introduces the significance of the topic,research review,research objectives and methods involved in the thesis.The first chapter sorts out the records involved in the story of the Orphan of Zhao from ZuoZhuan,Shiji and historical novel named Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi(Records of the Warring States in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty),and focuses on analyzing the image of Zhuangji,the unique female role in these works.Shifting from Zuozhuan to Shiji,the image of Zhuangji changed from a promiscuous woman to a good wife and loving mother.The novel also spent a large amount of words in elaborating and polishing this female character.The second chapter reviews the rich development of female roles of this story in Chinese classical dramas.Based on the texts of dramas in Song and Yuan dynasties,Yuan Zaju,Chuanqi Play in Ming and Qing Dynasties,Peking opera and Shaanxi opera,this chapter shows what kinds of changes and portrays that the female characters,such as Zhuangji,wife of Tu'an Gu,wife of Cheng Ying,has experienced all through the development of Chinese traditional dramas.Upon studying the modern adaptions of the Orphan of Zhao in stage play,opera,film,TV series,and musical,the third chapter demonstrates the artistic performance of the female images in the above mentioned forms,and also analyzes how the artistic form,performance effect,dramatic ideal exert influences on the shaping of female roles.Centered on the overseas adaptations of the Orphan of Zhao by playwrights involving Voltaire,Arthur Murphy,Shizheng Chen and Jeffery Ching,the fourth chapter analyzes different ideals and concepts that Western playwrights held on the design of the female characters in their works;and also presents the characteristics and shortcomings led by those differences originated from foreign culture and drama ideals in there-creation of traditional Chinese classical drama.The conclusion part summarizes the features of the female characters through out the changing process,which are embodied in three aspects:constant enriching and increasing of the female roles,the shift of focus on the role of women,as well as the single-functioning and stereotyping of the female images.Considering the inherent rules of literature and art together with the external influence from social ideology,the factors that causes the changes of the female roles mainly involve the restrictions resulted from genres or forms of the texts and works,dependent variable relationship with other characters in the story,as well as the influences brought by the change of social ideology,differences in discourse of Chinese and Western drama theories and moral values.