| There are two peaks in the history of Chinese drama,with the Yuan Zaju and the legend of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties being the most prosperous.As a symbol of the legend of the late Ming dynasty,“The Peony Pavilion”is based on the story of the departed soul,on the basis of drawing materials from the predecessors,and mixed with a large number of original colors.Different from the previous institutional form,content conception and the theoretical value to be conveyed,the peony pavilion has carried on a more profound transcendence to the story of leaving the soul in many aspects,which are quite thought-provoking and worthy of in-depth exploration.Firstly,the thesis summarizes the development of the ghost story before The Peony Pavilion.Starting from the form of expression,the content of the theme and the ideological meaning of the ghost story,this paper makes a systematic analysis of the ghost story,and then makes clear the general situation of the ghost story before.At the same time,we will discuss the different kinds of ghost stories directly related to The Peony Pavilion.Tang Xianzu never hid the fact that his work was derivative,in his inscription,he explicitly mentioned the selection of materials for the ghost stories such as “Li Zhongwen’s daughter”,“Feng Xiaojiang’s son”and “Tan Sheng”in The Peony Pavilion.Secondly,in the Chinese literature,music and lyrics have long been considered a “Last resort”.The flow of novels,scripts and plays is often rejected by the orthodox literature,and has to become the “Path”of street talk.By the way of “Legend”,“Game writing”and “Path”,Tang Xianzu’s “The Peony Pavilion”conveys the “Avenue”beyond the past ghost stories,and truly realizes the function of“Expressing the will”and “Carrying the way”.Thirdly,as a representative work of the legends of the Ming dynasty,The Peony Pavilion adopts a different form of expression from the previous ghost stories,and sublates the traditional form in the form of style,which is an alternative style keeping pace with the times.Not only has it incorporated the legend,the new carrier of the story of the departed,but compared with other legends of its time,the peony pavilion is more flexible and diverse in its form and system,and breaks through the standard style of the legend in its melody and language,the story of the departed with a unique innovative form of performance.Fourth,most of the traditional ghost stories are not rich in plot and loose in structure.The slightly structured story of the departed is just like the beautiful woman’s departed,which is only 40 percent,far less than the richness of the fifty-five plots in the peony pavilion and the clever combination of the three plots,it can hardly be compared with the complex arrangement of two parallel lines in The Peony Pavilion.Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavilion breaks free from the barriers of ghost stories and makes great progress in the transmission of literary values,the choice of literary form and the setting of content and plot structure.The thesis summarizes and discusses it,and demonstrates the classical significance and value of the peony pavilion by specific analysis. |
