Love And Life:Taoist Cultural Connotations Of The Peony Pavilion

The great Kunqu opera literature the Peony Pavilion written by Tang Xianzu, due to its excellent literary and artistic level, deep thought and humane spirit, has been a classic in Chinese traditional culture. In academic research, the Peony Pavilion is also examined and analyzed as one of the cultural classics, rather than as a piece of pure literary work.This paper intends to explore the ideological and cultural implication of the Peony Pavilion from the Taoist perspective. The theme of this work is the value of life and its core concept is "love". It artistically expresses the author’s view of life and value orientation through the opera story. And the conception of "love"or"life"in it reflects deep Taoist ideological and cultural background:First of all, the Peony Pavilion treats "love" as the essence of life, through the love story of Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei, it deeply depicts the author’s life experience about love and his life values. This life experience and perception of love has the obvious flavor of Taoist view on life. Different from the Confucian view of decency and inhibit the erotic life, Taoism advocates "love is nature" and "love and sex as one", respects and admits the emotions and desires as life ethics attributes of human beings. This point of view has a profound impact on Tang Xianzu’s "love" view on life.Secondly, the Peony Pavilion treats "love" as the value dimension and driving force of life, through Du Liniang’s death and reborn as a result of love, particularly highlighted the love-oriented life value. The author uses the Taoist ritual—the form of the Dojos to describe Du Liniang’s transformation process of life and death.Through the artistic handling of Taoism rituals of life, and Taoist figures depicting fully shows the Taoist spirit of respect life.Finally, the Peony Pavilion treats "love" as the aesthetic foundation of life, and raises the aesthetic view about reason and passion that is contrary to Confucianism. The author not only emphasizes the realness and naturalness of the life-emotion experiences, but also proposes that literature and art should express the true life experience. This kind of aesthetics also originates from the "nature" aesthetics praised highly by Taoism.Generally speaking, the Peony Pavilion is influenced by Taoist thought and culture on theme, content, and artistic expressions. From the view of cultural philosophy, this great work in essence delivers the Taoist view of life and value artistically and aesthetically.