Attempt And Confusion To Bridge The Gap

As another peak of Cao Yu’s drama life,"Peking Man" has always been a favorite of researchers for its poetic style and rich connotation,however,while the praise and interpretation are always continuous,the change of its version has attracted little attention.In fact,since the first edition of 1941,modifications have been made in multiple versions of the drama,which not only has a considerable impact on its canonization and interpretation in different periods,but also reflects the obvious running-in and tension between Cao Yu and the discourse of The Times internally.This paper tries to start with the changes of the version of "Peking Man",analyzes the essential differences among the versions through combing and mutual proofreading,and explores the change of Cao Yu’s mentality behind this reflection.First of all,the introduction part briefly summarizes the achievements in the text study of "Peking Man" and the early version of Cao Yu’s dramas over the years,and based on the unpreciseness of the phenomenon that the edition is selected at random but the conclusion is unified in the process of the study,to expounds the necessity of edition research of “Peking Man”.The first chapter mainly studies the version spectrum of "Peking Man",after comprehensive modification of the main body,the degree of change,the semantic impact and other factors,selects the first edition,the Kaiming edition,and the "Play Florilegium" edition in the following analysis.The second chapter adopts the form of mutual proofreading of the first edition and the Kaiming edition,takes the disappearance of "Peking Man" as the eye,through the abridging of symbolic metaphor,the turning of ideal personality,the flattening of image depth and the transformation of drama style,discusses the destruction of the original tension and poetry by the deletion and modification which attempts to approach the “real”.The third chapter looks at the version characters of the "Play Florilegium" edition,correspondingly analyzes the actual embodiment and deep motivation of Cao Yu’s "collation of words","keep the original appearance","no bigchanges" in this version changes,explores the essence and limits of the so-called "return" in the "Play Florilegium" edition under the subjective intention of restoring the first edition.The fourth chapter focuses on the story behind the version.The transitional nature of the first edition of "Peking Man" and the core content and presentation effects of the two major reforms both reflect the increasingly clear gap between Cao Yu and the general environment of The Times,as well as the attempt and confusion of the difficult bridging.This chapter tries to close to the real creative state and complex mood of Cao Yu before and after the founding of the People’s Republic of China,from the three aspects of what was wiped out along with "Peking man",the poetic inside collect to dissipation and the fracture hidden under the tension.The significance of edition research lies not only in its fundamental position in the study of disciplines,but also in the transcendence of edition itself.This paper also hopes to deepen the understanding of "Peking Man" from a diachronic perspective based on and above the version,and to cast a glimpse of the intellectual spiritual world represented by Cao Yu in the 1940 s and 1950 s.