Cultural transformation and the Chinese idea of a historical play: Two early Ch'ing plays.

摘要

This study looks into two early Ch'ing (seventeenth century) historical plays as reflection on a critical and complex period in Chinese history---the late Ming culminating in the dynastic fall, as well as on themselves as theater with which to make sense of that experience and transform it.; Chapter I establishes the theoretical framework and historical context. Part I examines the Chinese conception of the musical performative arts and of history, as responses to the tragic problem of time and mortality. Part II looks into the basic nature of the popular performative traditions and how they are related to the main cultural tradition, in terms of pairs of relations: scholar-intellectual and jester-player, man of letters and performer-actor, classical/refined and common/vulgar, and with particular reference to the late Ming period (16th and 17th centuries), literary and performative values in theater aesthetics, with focus in the late Ming literati aesthetic mode of life centering round the courtesan and the theater.; Chapters 2 and 3 analyze respectively the two plays, Tao-hua-shan [The Peach Blossom Fan] and Ch'ang-sheng-tien [The Palace of Everlasting Life], as reflection on and transformation of the late Ming tragic historical experience, while illuminating the nature of the ch'uan-ch'i theater and its significance for that period. These two plays demonstrate in themselves and between them how the values and principles underpinning the cultural tradition, both elite and popular, work in a time of crisis at a particular historical moment. It is shown how these plays illustrate and exemplify the Chinese conception of the musical theatrical arts as transformative vehicle, and that the Chinese idea of a historical play is implicit in the very principles of cultural transformation.