Research On The Evolution And Dissemination Of The Journey To The West

As is known to all, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh, the literary classic Journey to the west is the accumulative works. The prototype of the Story of a Journey to the West is a story that Monk Tang went to India to seek Buddism. It has been evolved to this novel for almost one thousand years, and its content spread in various forms. Till Ming Dynasty, Wu Chengen established its unshakable position by improving its structure and content on the basis of the former writers. However, people did not stop adapting the story. Instead, with the development of science and technology, the story appears to the public in a new form of TV plays, thus evolving a new flow of adapting.Based on such background, This thesis attempts to take the evolution process and film adaptation as the main research direction,which from the historical events to Wu’s version of "journey to the west" into the West story all the books in this period. combined with the science of communication and enclosing its course of development, its route of transmission and its transmission feature to analysis the relationship between the evolution and the route of transmission of the Journey to the West, so as to make it clear that because of different narrative pattern and technique of expression, different transmission genre plays quite different role in the adapting of the story. Therefore, this thesis will divided into three parts:Firstly,according to chronological order and combing history, the origin of the Story of Journey to the West and the formation of the novel and all of its evolution are discussed, exploring the evolution process of the four characters and then classing documents and materials relating to the story.Secondly, analyzing the transmission pattern and characteristics of the story from four different transmission genre like the folk talk, Shuohua, Yuan zaju opera and novel. Therefore, exploring the interrelationship of different genre and the story from the perspective of transmission.Finally, this thesis analyze how animation, TV play and movie adapt the Journey to the West in the age of mass communication, and the influence of TV plays to novels.