Female Images in Yu Ta-kang''s Dramatic Works

• Main Authors: Chen Jia-ru, 陳佳汝
• Other Authors: Lin Fong-hsiung
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/25456372481746740505

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 戲劇研究所 === 90 === This study probes into the reformation of Yu Ta-kang’s dramatic works of Chinese opera in the age of Western culture influences on the East. Through comparing with plays of the same subjects written in earlier dynasties, and examining his essays, I aim to explore the female images seen in this reformation as well as the new meanings in the form of traditional Chinese opera created by Yu Ta-kang. By analyzing Yu Ta-Kang’s six plays---Li Ya-xian: A New Story of Embroidered Coat, Wang Kui Becomes Ungrateful to Jiao Gui-ying, The Yang Family’s Eighth Daughter, Heroine, Hundred-Flower Princess, and A Woman’s Face with Peach Blossoms---in terms of the dramatic structures in the related plays and female images, I would like to explore Yu Ta-kang’s references to the original plays and to reveal his creation and the themes in these plays. Li Ya-xian: A New Story of Embroidered Coat will be compared with Bai Xing-jian’s fiction, The Story of Li Wa, Shi Jun- bao’s tsa-chu, The Qu-jiang Pond, and Xue Jin-yan’s play, The Story of an Embroidered Coat. Wang Kui Becomes Ungrateful to Jiao Gui-ying will be compared with Extant Song and Yuan Dynasty Southern Drama, Wang Yu-feng’s The Story of Burning Incense, and a Sichuan opera Detecting the Affection. The Yang Family’s Eighth Daughter will be compared with Resisting the Horse in Sewing White Fur Coat. Hundred-Flower Princess will be compared with The Story Hundred Flowers, a Ming play. The television Peking opera A Woman’s Face Peach Blossoms will be compared with Ouyang Yuqian’s stage play of the same title. The result of this thesis indicates that Yu Ta-Kang’s plays not only include conflict, crisis, discovery, and reversal of situation seen in western plays, but also contain a particular description of female characters. The women he creates are not traditional Chinese women. Under his pen, women become more outstanding than men. The female characters’ changes are more pregnant with new meanings. Besides, Yu Ta-kang uses more techniques of television camera in order to exalt the beauty of “free strokes and shuns details” spirit in Chinese opera. He expects that in this way Chinese opera can be appreciated by every audience, and that it is able to retain its own characteristics as well. At the same time, he maintains that the reformation of Chinese opera must emphasize both “modern” and “traditional” elements. Indeed his dramatic ideas are practiced through his plays.