THE PRE-LEFTIST ONE-ACT DRAMAS OF TIAN HAN (1898-1968) (CHINESE THEATRE).

摘要

In 1968 Tian Han, one of the giants of the modern Chinese drama movement, died in prison, a victim of one of the vicious purges against literary figures that was instigated by Jiang Quin and her confederates during the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His name was formally restored to honor in 1979 when his contributions to Chinese drama and theatre were acknowledged by the Chinese government and his surviving colleagues. Although the far-reaching effects of Tian Han's pioneering efforts during the nineteen-twenties, when he first began writing dramas, have been applauded by Tian's countrymen, they have been overlooked by Western scholars.;Tian Han almost singlehandedly revolutionized Chinese theatrical practice with his early one-act plays. Although structurally flawed, the plays represent the earliest attempts by a modern Chinese playwright to utilize a foreign form, spoken drama, and a foreign style, realism, to create dramas that were uniquely Chinese in theme and subject matter. Through his tours, his teaching and his experiments in dramatic writing, Tian Han not only moved the hearts of a decade of theatregoers but laid the foundation for a novel approach to theatre and drama to which Chinese playwrights and performers would continue to be committed throughout the twentieth century.;The goals of the study are to expand the body of modern Chinese dramatic literature to which English speaking scholars and students have access by providing translations of nine one-act dramas written by Tian Han between 1920 and 1930 and to demonstrate in critical prefaces to the plays wherein those works are historically significant and successful as adaptations of Western-style dramatic technique. The nine works considered include: "A Night in a Cafe" (1920), "The Night a Tiger Was Captured" (1921), "Before Lunch" (1921), "View of a Riverside Village" (1927), "Night Talk in Suzhou" (1927), "Tragedy on a Lake" (1928), "Shivers" (1929), and "Return South" (1929).