Modern Tragedy Viewpoint

Chinese tragedy ideas are the relevant tragedy argumentations, which the Chinese scholars recognize, and grasp the ancient Chinese tragedy. It contains abundant contents. The Chinese scholars approached the subject from different angles: such as the styles, the subject matter, the tragedy characters, the tragedy endings, the tragedy conflicts, the tragedy consciousness, tragedy spirits of ancient Chinese tragedy, etc. It also included the scholar's recognition of the "Happy ending". In addition to these argumentations, they put forward the standards of Chinese tragedy and the common measurement of Chinese and western tragedy. Most of them expounded their Chinese tragedy ideas by means of the comparison between Chinese and western tragedy in the tragedy endings, the tragedy characters, and the tragedy conflicts these three aspects.There lies different aesthetic characteristics in two kinds of Chinese and western tragedy and these has turned out to be the very active fruit obtained by contemporary and modern Chinese by means of circular consideration of Chinese tragedy in process. Since the 20th, Wang guowei, Hushi, Luxun, Zhu guangqian, and Qian zhongshu etc were more aware of the western tragedy theories; they grasp and dissect the ancient Chinese tragedy, and open up a really new world. In contemporary and modern times, the Chinese harvested much morenegative opinions than positive ones in tragedy recognition. In the meantime, too many people were experiencing a developing process from negative to positive side. There are probably three sorts of trends as we review contemporary and modern Chinese tragedy ideas developmental thread of thought: the first is the type of negating the existence of Chinese tragedy, the second is the type of affirming the existence of Chinese tragedy and the third is the type of scientific or general tragedy conception which consists of the common measurement of Chinese and western tragedy. In the second trends, it also consists of two kinds of thoughts: The first thought is regarding the "Happy ending" as the distinguishing feature of Chinese tragedy; the second thought is looking upon the "Happy ending" as the products of weakening the Chinese tragedy spirits. These three sorts of trends were probably not supposed to grasp the main difference between Chinese and western tragedy and they might not have broken from the restraint andconfinement in determining Chinese tragedy thinking mode by virtue of western tragedy ideas.This essay starts from the general outline of Chinese tragedy ideas, developmental thread of thought of contemporary and modern Chinese tragedy ideas, careful theoretical observation of contemporary and modern Chinese tragedy ideas these three aspects. It has found out that Chinese tragedy in this special period experienced positiveness andnegation over and over again, advancing in great twists and twisting in great advance, very much like a sort of spiral rise or advance wave upon wave, therefore, indicated the development of materialist dialectics. From the developmental thread of thought, contemporary and modern Chinese tragedy ideas development together with all the negation and recurrence has showed that Chinese literature in the end is destined to be back to Chinese culture no matter how it has been influenced by western culture. We cannot call it cultural conservation but Chinese literature conscious localization in Chinese and western cultural collision. And this also testifies that Chinese tragedy spirits has good vitality.