The Aesthetic Study And Reflection Of The <Peony Pavilion · Quan Nong>

In the twenty-sixth year of Wanli(AD 1598)of the Ming Dynasty,the Peony Pavilion created by Tang Xianzu was published,and the eighth fold named "Quan Nong"mainly described Du Bao as a local official to the countryside to persuade farmers and received warm hospitality.The content of the play and the tortuous performance history are of great value to the aesthetic study of the ceremonial drama,but they are ignored by the academic and performing circles for a long time.Therefore,the research on this topic has important theoretical and practical significance.The performance of Quan Nong is roughly divided into three stages in the 400-year performance history of Peony Pavilion.In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties,Quan Nong was eliminated in the reform of "The Peony Pavilion" with Duliu's love as the main line.In the middle of the Qing Dynasty,thanks to the highly consistent of the content of this play and the Royal Persuasion of Agricultural Instruments,it became popular in the royal court and was sent to the home of the bureaucrats.Later,this play was brought to the ordinary people and became an auspicious drama.At the end of the Qing dynasty,due to the collapse of the small-scale peasant economy and the transformation of the theatre form by the urbanization,the social functions of the opera were gradually weakened,Quan Nong is also gradually submerged in the historical trend.The peak of the performance of Quan Nong was by the promotion of the court.This phenomenon is rare in other operas in the history and there are two points.First,the content of the opera and the propaganda ritual itself are highly overlapped,and the deviation of the deductive scene from the actual scene provides the audience with an unfamiliar aesthetic experience.Secondly,the performance of Quan Nong on the stage continued and better fulfilled the social function of the countryside's agricultural rituals.Dramas and rituals have deep historical and symbiotic relationships.Dramas have the role of ethnic cohesion and spiritual settlement in ancient times,but operas do not,like rituals,embrace religious aura to guide people to awe,but use a set of stylized languages creating a habitat for one's soul.The opera borns in the ritual,and its innate symbolic meaning of the procedural factors plays a non-negligible role in the construction of opera and aesthetic sense.Therefore,it is urgent and necessary to emphasize the study of the "how" of opera,and Chen Shizheng's version of Quan Nong is an exploration to return to the origin of traditional operas."Drama" as an ancient cultural carrier is not a simple concept,but a diachronic cultural category with multiple inner structures and rich external forms.Only by finding the "root" of this art can it be better to protect,appreciate and reform traditional operas.