A Comparative Study Of Taohua Shan And Xihu Shan

Taohua Shan and Xihu Shan are legendary operas in the Qing dynasty,whose authors are Shangren Kong and Yaokang Ding respectively.These two opera are named after Shan,and their authors have the same social background and similar life experience.Therefore,in this thesis,we investigate the relationship between these two operas to enhance our understandings of Qing legendaries.This thesis is organized as follows.Chapter I compares Taohua Shan and Xihu Shan’s themes in terms of survivor feelings and dynasty alternation.Both Shangren and Yaokang express their survivor feelings in theirworks,while Shangren has more in-depth observation.Chapter II focuses on opera actor choices of Taohua Shanand Xihu Shan.We analyzed Shangren and Yaokang’s preferences of choosing shen,dan,jin,chou,mo actors via data.It shows that these two authors have their own theory in choosing actors,which generates different stage performance.Chapter III compares Shan’s meanings in bothoperas.Wefirst investigated Shan’s structure meanings in Zhaoyingmi and Chuanchaqi.Xihu Shan is worse in Zhaoyingmi but better in Chuanchaqi.Then we analyzed Shan’s stage functionality in cooperation with Kejie.Lastly we investigate the romatic implication of Shan during the Ming and Qing dynasties.Chapter IV expands our analysis to the transition between Ming and Qing legendries in terms of opera structure,legendary art and language style.