| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 中國語文學系 === 93 === This paper explores the evolution of Chinese opera and its relationship with the Enlightenment movement based on the newspapers and journals of late Ching Dynasty in Shanghai. It comprises six chapters and two parts. The first part discusses the development of the newspaper industry in Shanghai in the late Ching Dynasty and the progress of literature movement. Under the influence of Liang Chi-chao’s “novel revolution”, the trend of modified Chinese opera composition has formed in Shanghai. The large amount of modified Chinese operas was published on newspapers and literature journals to reach out to the public. To pass the thought of Enlightenment to the public through newspapers, the reading interest and publishers’ operating mechanism must be concerned as well. Besides revolution newspapers, ordinary newspapers and literature journals had to rely on the market to survive. The published content must pass the screening of the newspaper office, and the article contained the creative idea of the writer and the beliefs f the newspaper office. The published installments of Chinese opera compositions reached out to the readers through the screening strategies of the editors. The compositions not only exhibit the creative ideas of the playwrights or implications of Enlightenment but also reveal the voice that the newspaper passed to the society.
Before the emergence of the newspaper industry in Shanghai, Chinese opera reached out to the reader in mere form of books. Newspapers and journals changed the reading habit, and provided easily understandable text and interesting illustration to allow the readers reading purposelessly and comfortably. The association of the recreational reading of people in Shanghai in the late Ching Dynasty with Enlightenment under the premise of recreational consumption, and its approach to satisfy the purposes of enlightening and being enlightened, was much like the actual performance on the stage in tea garden. How the modified Chinese opera served its purpose of enlightenment and entertainment challenged the composition abilities of the playwrights, and required the interpretation of the roles by the actors and the support from the tea garden owner.
The second part discusses how the modified Chinese opera was interpreted through the historical perspective in the late Ching Dynasty and how playwrights present the “view” of Enlightenment. The classic construction of “Tao Hua Shan” by the literati of the late Ching Dynasty was the nostalgia of those literati toward the era of the late Ming Dynasty, which derived from the patriotic feeling. When the historical scenario of the late Ming Dynasty reappeared on the stage of tea garden in Shanghai, the literati who felt adrift in terms of ethnic belonging regained the “soul mate” on the stage. The historical memory and ethnic boundary redefined the cognitions of the literati and knowledge level. The national consciousness of the late Ching Dynasty appeared confusing. As the concept of “nation” of the modern times was introduced to China, it was a profound and vague concept to most people in the late Ching Dynasty. Most playwrights of the modified Chinese opera incorporated the historical or current events of China or Western countries into the compositions. Thus, the discourse of modified Chinese opera formed a trend in the drama circles in Shanghai.
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