The Mid-ming Opera

The middle period of the Ming Dynasty is regarded as a link between the preceding and the following in the development of traditional Chinese opera in the Ming Dynasty. On one hand, it witnessed the remaining influence of Zaju appeared in the late Yuan Dynasty and the early of Ming Dynasty, and on the other hand, it saw the prosperity of Chuanqi in the late Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty. During the process of the development of the traditional opera in the middle period of the Ming Dynasty, many changes occurred in the respects of writers, themes, forms, language style and so on. What's more, a number of factors jointly contributed to its blooming.This article consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 "On the opera writers" mainly concerns the opera writers in the middle period of Ming Dynasty. First, by exploring their family background, life experiences, and their attitudes towards the mainstream traditional literature as well as popular operas, the author discloses the cultural backgrounds of the opera writers and finds that a good writing group is one of the elements that led to the prosperity of the opera of that period. Second, by analyzing the geographic distribution and the mobility of those opera writers, which served as a basic condition for the opera writer-mainstream intellectual and opera writer-opera writer communications, the author discovers that it was those frequent communications that helped the spread of the traditional opera and promoted its development. Finally, this chapter also expounds how the trend of thought of "returning to the ancients" affects the writing of the operas in terms of theme option and style innovation.Chapter 2 "On themes" analyzes the characteristics of theme options of the humanizing operas, custom operas, politics operas, religious operas, intellectual operas, chivalrous lady operas and allegory operas and reveals the close connections between theme options and reality of the time. The author finds that there are distinctive differences between Zaju and Chuanqi in their themes.Chapter 3 "On forms and styles" by comparing Zaju in the Yuan Dynasty , analyzes...