A Study On Liang TingNan's Dramatic And Drama Theory

Liang Tingnan (1796-1861), or Zhang Ran(second name), or cane flower pavilion owner(nick name), was born in Renjiao, Shunde, Guangdong. He was a famous scientist, historian, poet, dramatist, Chinese opera theorist, and textual critic in Late Qing Dynasty, so he could be called a versatile person. Liang Tingnan had experienced Jiaqing, Daoguang and Xianfeng, three periods of time—the transition time of Chinese history from traditional to modem. Obviously influenced by such a historical background, Liang's life, thought, and writing are very valuable to be researched.Divided into three parts, this paper mainly studies into Liang's opera works and opera theories as a whole.The first part is an overview of the deep solid educational foundation Liang received from family elders, the rough life experiences, the rich writings with both modern and traditional thought characteristics, which serves as the foundation and background of the research on his opera works and opera theories.In the second part, the author studies Liang's opera works, mainly about "the small four dreams" ideology, artistic characteristics and their in-depth causes. In the small four dreams, Liang displayed his philosophy thinking of "life is a dream", his concern on social reality, and his "Dream" enthusiasm and preference for the tragedy. His works present modern artistic characteristics shared by all literary dramas over the historical transitional period. All these features are closely related to the last feudalism living environment, the aesthetic tendency of the literati as well as the writer's difficult life experiences.In the third part, the author studies Liang's opera theories. His drama thought showed in Qu Hua mainly includes the great attention to the social function of opera, opera's plot structure, the preference for elegant to vulgar language, and equal attention to emotion and reason. His critical methods display such modern scientific empiricism characteristics as paying great attention to the evidence, using comparison and inductive reasoning.Eminent scholars have made many progresses in the research on Liang's "Qu Hua ". Refering as a reference to Li Yu (the great Chinese opera theorist in Qing Dynasty) and Wang Guowei (The pioneer in the modern opera theory), the author discovers that although not having obtained such universally acknowledged achievement as Li Yu and Guowei Wang. Liang's drama studies connected between Li Yu and Wang Guowei, so he was the first person to open to the modern transformation of opera theory from the traditional to the modern times.In short, all of his ideology, his opera works or his opera theories have manifested the characteristics of the literati over the historical transitional period, and they deserve our further study.