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China is a great ancient civilization. In the long history of 5,000 years, our ancestors created splendid culture, and rich and diverse literary forms had to become the most beautiful scenery. The continuous creation, integration, renewal and transcendence of literary forms is also one of the main reasons and clues for the evolution of the history of ancient Chinese literature. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the development of ancient literary genres.
There are various forms of ancient literature in China, each of which has its own unique development process. From the ancient knotting notes, to the eternal writing, to the appearance of the earliest literary style-primitive poetry, to the appearance and explosive development of poetry, prose, novels and dramas, the scenes of ancient literature in China are endless, and Wang Yang is turbulent. It can be said that, from a certain point of view, the history of ancient Chinese literature is also an evolutionary history of literary forms. Stylistic research has been an important part of China's ancient literary criticism since Wei and Jin Dynasties. Many literary criticisms in ancient times were actually stylistic criticisms, such as Wen Xin Diao Long, which was actually a masterpiece of stylistic research. The eight styles mentioned in Wen Xin Diao Long are actually the eight styles of the article.
Literary genre refers to the types and styles of all literary works. This is a contemporary accepted view. But this is just a concise statement, and the concept cannot be fully explained. This theory is adopted because the content involved in this paper is the development of ancient literary style.
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Generally speaking, the origin of China's ancient poetry is marked by the appearance of primitive ballads. For example, there is a song: "Break bamboo, continue bamboo, fly soil and eat meat." It is the reproduction of original production and life. It can be regarded as the pioneering work of China's ancient poetry. In addition, early poems and hexagrams in Zhouyi are the early forms of China's poems.
The first peak of the formation and development of China's ancient poetry genre was The Book of Songs.
The Book of Songs is China's first collection of poems, which contains 305 poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty (1 1 century BC) to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period (6th century BC). Originally called The Book of Songs, it was called The Book of Songs because Confucian scholars in the Han Dynasty regarded it as a classic.
The composition of the authors of The Book of Songs is very complicated, and their geographical sources are also very extensive. In addition to the music songs produced by music officials in the Zhou Dynasty and presented by officials and scholars, there are many folk songs that were originally circulated among the people. There are different opinions about how these folk songs came to the court. Some scholars in the Han Dynasty believed that the Zhou Dynasty sent special poets to collect folk songs and understand the advantages and disadvantages of politics and customs. There is another saying: these folk songs are collected by musicians all over the world. Musicians are officials and experts in charge of music. They compose poems as their profession and collect folk songs to enrich lyrics and tunes. The pleasure of princes is dedicated to the emperor, and these folk songs are gathered in the court. These statements all have some truth. And these have no influence on the value of The Book of Songs. So we won't discuss it here.
In The Book of Songs, a large number of expressive techniques of Fu, Bi and Xing were used, which strengthened the image of the works and achieved good artistic effects. The so-called "Fu" is interpreted by Zhu as "telling the truth" in Shi Zhuan. This includes general statements and layout statements. Zhu's interpretation of "comparison" is "comparing one thing with another", which is metaphor. Metaphors are used in many places and in various ways in The Book of Songs. For example, Dream uses the change of mulberry trees from lush to withered to compare the rise and fall of love; He Ming used the metaphor that "stones from other mountains can attack jade" to say that he would use sages to govern the country, and so on, all of which are good examples of using "comparison" in the Book of Songs. Besides, there are many meaningful uses of "Xing", such as metaphor, symbol and contrast. But it is precisely because "Xing" is originally produced by the drifting and association of ideas without reason, so even if it has more real meaning, it is not so rigid, but subtle. For example, Guan Guan's novel begins with "Guan Guan's dove is in the river continent", which was originally used by the poet to lead to the following "My Fair Lady, Gentleman is Nice", but the harmony of Guan Guan can also be used to describe the courtship between men and women, or the harmonious love between men and women, but its metaphorical meaning is not clear.
The application of the expressive techniques of Fu, Bi and Xing in The Book of Songs has greatly inspired later poems, and is also a vivid reference for later poems in form, which plays an inestimable role in the development history of the whole poem.
When it comes to The Book of Songs, it is necessary to talk about the parallel Chu Ci.
Chu Ci was born out of Chu Ci, which is one of the concentrated expressions of Chu culture. The representative figure of Chu Ci creation is Qu Yuan, a great patriotic poet.
If The Book of Songs is the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the working people in the pre-Qin period, then The Songs of Chu is the beginning of the writer's conscious creation. Chu literati, represented by Qu Yuan, created brilliance. Qu Yuan's poems also like a lot of rhetoric. He also developed the figurative techniques in The Book of Songs, endowing plants, fish, insects, birds and animals, Yun Ni and other natural things with human will and life, so as to pin their thoughts and feelings and increase the aesthetic feeling of poetry. Generally speaking, the schools of literary beauty in China ancient literature can be traced back to Qu Yuan. In the form of poetry, Qu Yuan broke the short and pithy system of The Book of Songs, and created a "Sao-style poem" with long or short sentence patterns, grand length and rich and complicated connotations, which had a far-reaching impact on later Song-style poems.
Following the Book of Songs and Songs of the South, Yuefu poetry in the Han Dynasty made a brilliant contribution in the history of ancient poetry.
The mainstream of literature in Han Dynasty is literati creation, and the mainstream of literati creation is ci fu. As a folk creation, Yuefu folk songs are non-mainstream. Although it is consistent with literati literature, there are more inconsistencies. This non-mainstream folk creation, with its strong vitality, gradually influenced the creation of literati, and finally promoted the vigorous rise of poetry, replacing the rule of Ci and Fu on the literary world. In contrast, Han Yuefu's poetry has the following characteristics: it has a strong flavor of life, especially for the first time, it specifically and profoundly reflects the difficulties and pains of the daily life of the lower classes; It laid the foundation of China's ancient narrative poems. Thirdly, the folk songs of Han Yuefu show strong and explicit emotions; Many works show the short and impermanent sorrow of life; Show a rich imagination.
The outstanding feature of Yuefu poetry in Han Dynasty is that it broke the four-character style of the Book of Songs and the miscellaneous style of Chu Ci, and formed the five-character style and miscellaneous style. The overall trend is that the neat five-character style is more and more dominant. This provides a valuable reference for the later poetry forms of Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang Dynasties.
The Tang Dynasty is the highest peak of China's poetry, and it is also the period of the formation and perfection of poetry genre. During this period, "modern poetry" represented by regular poems and quatrains and "ancient poetry" represented by poetic style were formed.
The great hero of the school of Tang poetry should be the first to promote the Divine Comedy. Song and Shen? Trouble? Zhu Bi? What about Shaanxi? What's wrong with milk? Scratch k？ What's wrong with Joe? What is the disinfection guide for drought thumb vinegar? Fu, Song and Yue? The man asked Jiao Xiaoding if the R ring was right. I am so naive. ? What about the newspaper? Did you have fun? You seem willing to punish? Tomb? Kick? り? Kick? Is that weird? Hey? Making fun of cigarettes? Title? Sodium umbrella I? What do you want to do? Do you want to study? What happened? What happened? What's the matter with you? ⒅ Thorium? Crispy? Live broadcast?
After Shen Song, more and more people accepted the norms of rhythmic poetry, and more and more people participated in the creation, which contributed to the maturity of the form of rhythmic poetry. The poet who has made the greatest achievements in the creation of metrical poems should push Lao Du.
Du Fu's achievements in metrical poetry have made great contributions to the art of China's poetry. Before Du Fu, the Seven Laws were mostly used to make peace in the court. These poems are poor in content and language. Besides, there are few excellent works. After Du Fu arrived, he not only matured the seven laws, but also fully developed the possibilities contained in this poetic form. The seven laws, like the five laws, are fixed poetic forms. However, Du Fu took advantage of its slightly larger space than the Five Laws, which made it contain considerable capacity. In terms of language rhythm, although each sentence of the seven laws is only two words more than that of the five laws, after careful adjustment by Du Fu, various changes can be produced. As a result, the seven methods have become a poetic form with a unique artistic expression, which is both beautiful and neat, and open and closed.
Another important form of Tang poetry is singing. Including five-character songs, seven-character songs and miscellaneous songs. The representative works of Wuyan Song include Du Fu's From Beijing to Fengxian, The Northern Expedition and Li Bai's Chivalry. Seven-character songs such as Du Fu's Car Shop, Second Way, Bai Juyi's Song of Eternal Sorrow, Pipa Music, etc. The most distinctive is Li Bai's Zaqu.
Li Bai's personality determines the formal characteristics of his poems. When the poet's surging poetry can't be accommodated by ordinary images, the poet expands his imagination and fantasy, and realizes the artistic transformation with words. This deformation is based on the poet's strong feelings, which makes the image break through the convention and obtain fantastic colors. As a result, the wanton and mixed songs have been fully played in Li Bai, such as "Xuanzhou Xie?" "My building farewell school book uncle cloud" cloud:
Since yesterday, I have to leave Bolt and me behind. It hurts my heart even more today. Autumn geese are escorted by Changfeng, and I treat them in this villa and drink my wine. Great writers are all your brushes in their bones. In the school in heaven, I grew up beside you. We all hold high the idea of going far away and want to go to heaven to embrace the bright moon. But since the water is still flowing, although we cut it off with our swords, let's raise our glasses to ease our worries. Since the world can't satisfy our desire, I will let go of my hair and get on a fishing boat tomorrow.
There are only twelve sentences in the whole poem, but the poet's emotional activities have experienced several ups and downs.
In "Dream on Mount Tianmu", he made the loudest voice: bow down to the powerful, and the powerful will never get an honest face!
It can be seen that the uniqueness of zaju in lyricism is incomparable to other genres. Li Bai and Zaju complement each other. Zaju fully expresses Li Bai's feelings, and in this process, the form of Zaju has also been fully developed and improved.
We are talking about two special forms of poetry: words and songs.
Ci and Qu are the development of literary forms after the Tang Dynasty. Is an important part of the development of poetry. Their relationship is: Ci evolved from Yuefu and then into Qu. Ci became in Tang Dynasty and flourished in Song Dynasty. Ci, as a new literary genre, has formed a certain pattern in subject matter and language style through the efforts of many literati since the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties. In the meantime, although Li Yu made a breakthrough, it was only a special case, and it seemed that there was little change on the whole. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Ci continued to be loved by literati including the supreme ruler. This form became an important part of literature in the Song Dynasty, and it flourished after the Song Dynasty. Bend one's words Qu is the closest to the word system, and both of them belong to the form of long and short sentences with fixed meter. According to Wang Guowei's statistics, there are as many as 75 kinds of Yuan Ququ films since the Tang and Song Dynasties. Therefore, some people call Sanqu "Yuci". The forms of Sanqu can be divided into two categories: one is poetry, and the other is the number of sets. Poetry is generally written by one piece of music, and there are other special forms such as "taking a piece of music", "gathering a piece of music", "starting over" and "changing the head", all of which are connected by several pieces of music according to certain rules. The number of sets, also known as "scattered sets", is written with more than two tunes in the same tone, similar to the number of sets in zaju.
To sum up, the development of China's ancient poetry began with ancient ballads and hexagrams, developed to the Book of Songs, Songs of Chu and Yuefu in the Han Dynasty, and then reached its peak in Tang poetry, Song poetry and Yuanqu. It is a complicated process of continuous innovation and perfection, and it is a main line of the evolution of ancient literary genres.
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China's ancient prose genre has roughly experienced the process from scattered to complete, and then from complete to scattered.
The beginning of China's ancient prose should start with the historical prose of pre-Qin and hundred schools of thought's prose. As far as the system is concerned (it can't be described as a genre here), the formation of historical prose in pre-Qin has an evolutionary process. The early history books, except for the disguised part, are completely a compilation of documents preserved by historians; Although Chunqiu is said to be edited by Confucius, it still maintains the style recorded by historians. Zuozhuan and Guoyu, which were formed at the beginning of the Warring States Period, also made extensive use of official records, but they are no longer official works in a strict sense. As for the Warring States policy formed from the end of the Warring States period to the Qin and Han Dynasties, its main source is the private works of counselors. Generally speaking, this process is characterized by the gradual weakening of the official color. However, the later the work is, the closer it is to the people, the more significant its literary elements are, and correspondingly, the rigor of historiography is weakened. This can also be said to be one of the characteristics of creative style, and also belongs to the category of style.
As far as its genre is concerned, Shangshu is an ancient collection of articles. Spring and Autumn Annals used to be the general name of historical books in various countries in the pre-Qin period, but only Lu Chunqiu was handed down from generation to generation, so it became a special name. Spring and Autumn Annals was originally compiled by Lu historians. It is said that it has been sorted out and revised by Confucius and given special significance, thus becoming an important Confucian classic. Chunqiu is a chronological history book, which records the major events in the Spring and Autumn Period and is the ancestor of the chronological history book. The most prominent feature of Chunqiu is its writing style, which, as a writing technique, has a far-reaching influence on later generations.
Zuo Zhuan is an independent history book in essence. It's just that later generations may have made corresponding treatment after matching with Spring and Autumn Annals. Zuo Zhuan is the first historical work with rich literary factors, which directly influenced the writing styles of Warring States Policy and Historical Records. Advocating the combination of literature and history is the greatest contribution of Zuo Zhuan to prose. Another history book, Guoyu, is the first national history in China. Its form is different from other books such as Chunqiu. It takes the country as the narrative clue and records the major events in different periods, which is the first in history books.
Different from historical prose, various schools of thought in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period expressed their opinions, which was the product of a hundred schools of thought contending. His thought is based on his own purpose and is brilliant. It is precisely because it developed in an atmosphere of debate that its basic trend is from simple to rich, from scattered to rigorous. The later the work, the larger the space and the closer the organization. In the initial sense, the essays of various schools are political, philosophical and ethical expositions, not literary works.
As far as genre is concerned, it can be said that historical prose is narrative and various essays are argumentative. Hundred schools of thought's prose styles are different, but those differences should belong to the category of literary value, so I won't discuss them here.
By the Western Han Dynasty, as far as a single article is concerned (Historical Records is another discussion), the style of the article as a whole has obvious political color and practical nature, and it also pays attention to literary talent. This kind of article is greatly influenced by the change of national political situation. Until the emergence of a masterpiece "Historical Records".
Historical Records is a change of prose genre. The book consists of five styles: biography, biography, biography and biography. Benji is the outline of the whole book, which describes the political traces of monarchs or actual rulers in the past dynasties in a chronological way. "Table" lists the major events in various historical periods in tabular form, which is the supplement and connection of the narrative of the whole book; "Book" is a record of special matters such as astronomy, calendar, water conservancy and economy. Shijia is a biography of hereditary families and people who sacrificed in previous dynasties, such as Confucius and Chen Sheng. Biographies are biographies of all kinds of people outside the family and family, some of which record the history of all ethnic groups in the marginal areas of China. Through these five different styles, Historical Records cooperate with each other and complement each other, forming a complete historical system.
This genre is called biographical style, and has changed slightly since then, becoming the general genre of official history in past dynasties.
The development of prose in Wei and Jin Dynasties was not rapid, and this situation continued until the "ancient prose movement" in Tang Dynasty.
The so-called "ancient prose" is a concept put forward by Han Yu and others for the "modern prose" in the Tang Dynasty, that is, parallel prose, which was formed since the Wei and Jin Dynasties and was still popular in the early Tang Dynasty. Refers to the single-line prose style with no prescribed form in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties.
The difference between ancient prose and modern and contemporary prose lies in the different emphasis. Due to the high requirements for the form of the article, the current essays strive to be parallel prose, pay attention to rhetoric, be extravagant and gorgeous, and are a poetic style. But it is precisely because of this style that the content is vague and the emotional expression is not thorough. Based on this feature, Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan advocated the "ancient prose movement" to reform the style, so they launched a massive ancient prose movement.
The movement of ancient Chinese prose is a complicated phenomenon in the history of literature. In liberating literary style, overthrowing the absolute rule of parallel prose and restoring the function of free expression of prose, it has made indelible contributions to both practical articles and the development of artistic prose.
The development of China's ancient prose is roughly such a process. Until the later Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the genre of prose has not changed, and it is difficult to surpass the previous generation in achievements. The development of prose is roughly here.
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The novel is a pearl in China's ancient literary world. Where did the real novel come from and what changes have taken place? This is what we are going to discuss.
The birth of real novels should be counted in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Although the word novel appeared earlier, in Zhuangzi Waipian: "It is far from great to decorate novels with county magistrate (high reputation)." There is a saying. The "novel" mentioned here refers to humble and worthless words and meaningless literary rubbish, not just to style. There were novels about people and strange stories in Wei and Jin Dynasties, which should be the originator of novels.
Ji Shen is the most well-preserved and representative novel in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Its plot is complete and rich, and its image is vivid and vivid. Compared with the previous strange novels, it has developed to some extent and began to change the form of "few words" and rough outline. His writing style is unpretentious and has the characteristics of Wei and Jin historians' writings.
Later local chronicles novels are different from this, and most of them record the anecdotes that happened in the world. Shi Shuo Xin Yu, formerly known as Shi Shuo, was written by Liu Yiqing, king of Linchuan in Song Dynasty. It is the only well-preserved one of its kind and a masterpiece. The whole book is arranged in the form of a book, which is divided into 36 articles including morality, language, politics and literature.
In the Tang Dynasty, this novel was named "Legend", and one of the greatest features of tang legends's genre is its much longer length, rich content, strong expressive force and touching plot.
Legends of the Tang Dynasty originated from the novels of gifted scholars with strange tales in the Six Dynasties, but there are fundamental differences between them. Although the latter is not entirely for the purpose of propagating Shinto, but also for the purpose of entertainment, on the whole, it is deeply influenced by Shinto consciousness, but its consciousness as a literary creation is not clear; Among them (especially in the later period), although some works are tortuous, they are basically rough and lack of in-depth and detailed description. It was not until the legend of the Tang Dynasty that the situation changed fundamentally. Compared with the Six Dynasties, the legends of the Tang Dynasty have a more grand writing system and a relatively complete novel structure. Its plot is more complicated, its content tends to reflect the human world, and its characterization of characters and psychology has also been significantly improved. Thus, The Legend of the Tang Dynasty announced that China's classical novels began to enter a mature stage.
If the novel describing people and anecdotes is regarded as a short story, it can be said that The Legend of the Tang Dynasty is the embryonic form of a novella.
The peak of the novel was in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, marked by the appearance of Four Great Classical Novels and the maturity of short stories in classical Chinese. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, A Dream of Red Mansions and The Journey to the West represent the highest point of China's ancient novels and even the whole literary history. At this point, the pattern of long chapter novels has basically taken shape. During this period, short stories represented by "Sanyan" and "Erpai" also matured.
The greatest feature of The Romance of The Three Kingdoms is that it has a fairly complete and meticulous grand structure, handles complicated clues in an orderly way, and depicts an extremely magnificent historical picture. Highlighting this feature, the novel form of chapter-back style played an important role. The structure of the chapter makes the content of the story interlocking and echoing from beginning to end.
The Water Margin is mainly formed on the basis of folk stories and opera stories. It organizes many originally independent stories through transformation, which not only has a complete long framework (especially for Liangshan Juyi), but also retains a number of units that still have independent significance, which can be said to be a series structure of "plates". From the perspective of the structural art of the novel, this is of course immature, but from the perspective of shaping the characters, it also has its convenience. This is the superiority of this book in the application of novel genre.
The Journey to the West is another masterpiece, which is composed of many scattered stories and legends, but after re-creation, its structure is quite complete; His writing is humorous, clever and fluent, and he is good at describing all kinds of absurd scenes, showing a high artistic level.
As the highest peak of China's classical novels, A Dream of Red Mansions is more unique in genre structure.
A Dream of Red Mansions has a grand and exquisite long structure. If we try to analyze it, we can find that the novel contains several levels: the feelings and marriage disputes of Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai are the central clues of the novel; It can be seen that the Grand View Garden is the main place for people's activities, and the fate of many women such as Jia Baoyu, Lin and Xue in the Grand View Garden is the basic content of the novel. As a part of Jiafu, the Grand View Garden is closely related to the activities of the whole Jiafu, namely Ningguo Mansion and Guorong Mansion. The rise and fall of Jiafu, the complicated family conflicts and the fate of other characters in Jiafu are also the basic contents of the novel. The male in Jiafu is in contrast with the female world in the Grand View Garden. Judging from this expansion, Jia Fu, Xue Jia, historian and Wang Jia constitute a social stratum. Although the other two schools rarely appear in novels except Xue family, this structural method, which is mainly Jia family, supplemented by Xue family and supplemented by Shi and Wang, is enough to reflect the face of this special class; Judging from this expansion, the aristocratic families, mainly Jia's and supplemented by Xue's, have been in extensive contact with the outside world, from the court to the countryside, always reflecting the situation of the whole society; On top of all this, there is a vague and illusory mythical world, which constantly hints at the fate of A Dream of Red Mansions, making the novel always have a melancholy atmosphere in the scene of flowers.
It is such a great genre that carries a great work, which has become a model of classical novels.
The maturity of short stories is undoubtedly represented by "Sanyan" and "Erpai".
The source of Sanyan novels is different, and the situation is more complicated. As far as we can infer at present, a few of them are scripts of the Song and Yuan Dynasties that have been revised or even adapted to varying degrees, and some scripts of the Ming Dynasty that have been circulated have also been included. However, there is no work adapted from the old script in Er Pai, but it is completely created by the author according to unofficial history's notes, classical Chinese novels and social rumors at that time. Generally speaking, the concise and fascinating plots of these books require a short and beautiful system, which makes the creation of China's ancient short stories mature.
The genre change and development of novels are more reflected in the requirements of content for form and genre, so the whole history of novels is also a process of genre change and development.
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Compared with other literary styles, drama appeared late and concentrated. The earliest opera style should be regarded as a variant of the Tang Dynasty, followed by the story of the Song Dynasty and the Southern Opera. In the Yuan Dynasty, the development of drama reached its peak, that is, Yuan Zaju, which was as famous as Tang Poetry and Song Poetry. There were also some zaju dramas with high artistic achievements in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, but the literary and artistic value of Yuan Zaju and the perfection and formation of literary genre should be respected.
Bianwen refers to the manuscripts used in the "transformation" of folk art. Since its appearance, scholars in past dynasties have different opinions and conjectures on the interpretation of the word "change", some think it is a transliteration of Sanskrit, some think it means "change" and "magical change", and some even think it is the abbreviation of "causal change" in Buddhist language, so far there is no conclusion.
The performance form of "Bianwen" is transformed from "common saying", so there are many Buddhist stories in Bianwen, but they are not explained by quoting scriptures in sections, but by fully applying the stories in Buddhist scriptures. Later, it turned into folk art, and its content expanded beyond religion. In terms of its genre, it is not a drama. He only has one artist to perform rap, without specific actors and scenes, but in a sense, it is the embryonic form of later drama.
The development of drama in Song, Liao and Jin Dynasties was not outstanding, and the most distinctive one was The West Chamber by Xie Yuan in eastern Shanxi.
Zhu Gong Opera is a unique form of Quyi, a Quyi with both speaking and singing, which is different from Bianwen in Tang Dynasty. It is named after its singing combined with many palace tunes. According to records, there were various palace tunes in the Northern Song Dynasty. However, there are complete works handed down, and the West Chamber is the earliest. The greatest stylistic feature of The Romance of the West Chamber Zhu Gong Tune is that it draws nutrition from the long-term literary accumulation of the Han nationality, and the work has great luck in Tang and Song poetry, which is not available in early variants and scripts.
Now let's talk about Yuan Zaju.
Yuan Zaju directly inherited many characteristics of Jin Heqiang and developed on the basis of absorbing other folk arts. However, there is a qualitative difference between Yuan Zaju and Jin. Yuan Zaju became a mature drama with complete literary script, rigorous performance form and complete and rich content.
The basic structure of Yuan Zaju is to perform a play at a 60% discount, which is usually a wedge. Several plays are multiple copies; Wedges can be used without or with two or three. A "fold" is a story unit (also a music unit, see below). Among the four folds, most of them show changes in plot, inheritance, turning and combination. "Wedge" refers to inserting a small piece of wood into the tenon of the wood to fasten it, which is extended to zaju, referring to a short opening scene or cutting scene that plays a role in explaining or connecting the plot, and is an organic part of the whole script. This is a breakthrough and innovation in drama genre, and it is also the highlight of Yuan Zaju.
The core of Yuan Zaju is the lyrics. Each fold is composed of a set of tunes in the same palace tune and rhymes to the end-so "fold" is also a musical unit; You can choose four different palace tunes, with a 40% discount. This is another feature of the form of Yuan Zaju, but this feature is subordinate to the previous feature, and there is no "four folds and one wedge" form, so there is no lyric-centered feature.
When it comes to Yuan Zaju, we can't help but mention Guan (), Zheng (Guangzu), Bai (Pu) and Ma (Zhiyuan), which are the so-called "four masters of Yuan Qu". Their contribution to the genre and literary value of Yuan Zaju is irreplaceable. Let's take Guan Hanqing as an example. As a great dramatist in ancient China, Guan Hanqing has recorded 66 kinds of zaju * * * so far, and only 18 kinds exist. And his works can be divided into case-solving dramas and love dramas according to the performance content. Case-solving dramas are represented by Yuan, Lu Zhailang and Butterfly Dream, while love and marriage dramas are represented by Yue Ting and Feng Yue Diao.
The genre characteristics of Guan Opera are: widely adopting the form of "four folds and one wedge", being good at arranging plots, creating a dramatic atmosphere in fierce conflicts, and making the stage performance full of action. The 60% discount system of Yuan Zaju was originally short and easy to write thinly, but Guan Hanqing often cut and arranged it properly to accommodate rich content. This is also the similarity of several other writers.
South Opera, another drama form in Yuan Dynasty, is also an important part in the history of drama.
China's ancient dramas matured earlier, from Song Zaju, Jin Zaju to Yuan Zaju, and another branch matured later, that is, Southern Opera, which was popular in the southeast coastal areas. Originated in Wenzhou, Zhejiang (formerly known as Yongjia), it is also called "Wenzhou Zaju", "Yongjia Zaju" or "Yongjia Opera".
The genre of Southern Opera is very different from Zaju, which boils down to one thing: it is freer than Zaju in all aspects. Although there is a certain convention, but there is no strict organization of Gongdiao, you can choose freely according to the needs of the plot; Its script structure is different from that of zaju. Due to the limitation of music, there is no fixed pattern of "four books and one wedge", but it is divided by the upper and lower stages of the characters, which can be long or short, and most of them are longer than zaju; Unlike zaju, which stipulates that each play can only be sung by one role, it can be sung by any role, and there are many forms such as chorus, chorus and multi-person chorus, which can organically combine music, Bai Le and science.
In the Ming Dynasty, a new member of the drama family appeared-legend. This legend is different from that of the Tang Dynasty. By the middle of Ming Dynasty, the legend had replaced the leading position of zaju in the drama stage. Systematically broke the stereotype of Yuan Zaju. A drama is not necessarily 40% off, and it is not necessarily led by one person. Often, the songs of North and South are mixed together.
The greatest achievement of Ming Dynasty drama was Tang Xianzu. Among Tang Xianzu's four plays, The Peony Pavilion (full name "The Story of Peony Pavilion", also referred to as "The Story of the Soul") is the one that he has made the deepest efforts and can best express his literary thoughts and artistic talents. Strictly speaking from the genre, some defects of Peony Pavilion are obvious: there are 55 scripts, and the structure is loose and lengthy. However, due to its artistic uniqueness, this defect cannot hide its glory.
China's ancient dramas developed rapidly. Because it was concentrated in the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties and was loved by people, it made great achievements. Drama is one of the fastest growing genres in ancient literature.