A Study Of The Soul Belief In The Legend Of The Night

Chuanqi which involving soul-appearing plots is very important in TheatricalCircles in the Late Ming Dynasty. However, in the conventional academic research,scholars were prone to consider it as a part of the ghost drama, which caused thelogical problem; it is because some of the fingers in the dramas are not dead, whichis the necessary requirement of being a ghost. On the other hand, researchers didnot emphasize the soul itself in the drama and dramas are not discussed with “SoulBelief”. This paper discusses this problem, and makes a conclude that it is moreappropriate to choose the soul, which is more closer to human being because of itsnot being dead, as the center of discussing the Chuanqi which involvingsoul-appearing from the perspective of folklore. On this basis, the concept of“Shehun Chuanqi” is put forward, in which studies features and details of “SoulBelief” in late Ming Dynasty.“Soul Belief” of the late Ming Dynasty became the popular creative materialwhich dramatists attend to use in their Chuanqi, and plots of soul appearing in theChuanqi became the popular writing mode; these two phenomena must be becauseof the Soul belief being in accordance of the people’s taste, folk psychology,dramatists’ requirements. This paper attempts to find the unique feature of the “SoulBelief” in the “Shehun Chuanqi” by comparing the plots of Yuan Dramas and “ShehunChuanqi” in the late Ming Dynasty and to work out the reason why soul-appearingplots are so popular. Meanwhile from the view of the literature folklore, the writer isto discuss folk psychology hiding in “Shehun Chuanqi” and the co-interactionbetween the “Shehun Chuanqi” and the “Soul Belief”.