Study On Zaju Of Ma Zhiyuan

The thesis makes an inner ,global and dynamic investigation of Ma Zhiyuan's Zaju known to us on the basis of the thought that there exists a kind of changing deep structure in the meaningful context. The thesis attempts to find out it, discovering its changes and giving a reasonable interpretation so that we can grasp the core meaning of his writing and recognize his way of personality expression distinguishing from others in the history of Chinese ancient opera. The thesis mainly consists of three parts.The deep structure investigated in Ma's early writings is that person in the hobble is standing against the social law. The person suffers greatly and struggles hard in desperation, which is caused by the cruel social law. Sharp contrast in power makes hero/heroine with tragic recognition. That is, in spite of being pressed hard by the social law, he/she reacts against it not with deeds but with passion, thus generating sentimental character in Ma's writings. Meanwhile, whoever is anxious to be rescued under the social law is doomed to fail. Judging from person's reaction, the deep structure in the early writings implies a psychological logic: depression-promise, the reflection of Ma's early psychological structure as a traveling intellectual. Deducing from common traveling intellectuals' psychological state and feelings in Yuan Dynasty, it's known that "traveling" means both hopeless misery and endless seeking desire. So it is the reason with Ma's psychological structure.The deep structure in Ma's late writings has been transformed into another one: locked mundane world-immortal Utopia. Person in late writings shows great inclination to the latter, which rescued him/her from the hobble. From Yueyang Pavilion to Madman Ren, immortal Utopia grows more and more explicit, the essence of which is not secluded from the secular world for monasticism, but for permanent tranquil and leisure ream of spirit. Transformation of deep structure responds to Ma's psychological structure changing. His late Sanqu shows his psychological structure has been transformed from mental-constraint in official career to self-examination of mundane ideal and seeking agreeable temperament, the reason for which is that intellectuals show inclination of alienating from politics from Song Dynasty and that academic and religion advocate a new life style. Anyway, skinny horse imagery shows his conflicting in yearning for mundane fame.Last of all, comparison is made between Ma's and Gun Hanqing's writings to protrude Ma's unique writing style of strong individual character, aesthetic taste and mentalism. The spirit soil for Ma's writing is seclusion land-oriented not as Guan's writing being mundane world-oriented, which interprets certainty for transformation of deep structure in Ma's writing and immortal Utopia's emerging.