To Love Or Not to Love—Tang Xianzu's Reconciliation of Qing

TO LOVE OR NOT TO LOVE—TANG XIANZU’S RECONCILIATION OF QING WITH RU, SHI AND DAO by LING RAO (Under the Direction of KARIN MYHRE) ABSTRACT Tang Xianzu, one of the greatest playwrights in Chinese dramatic history, is best known for his play The Peony Pavilion, which has touched the hearts of generations of female and male readers and audiences, fueling the cult of qing in late imperial China. Tang’s last two plays, Nanke Ji and Handan Ji, end with the protagonists attaining Buddhahood and immortality, forsaking their previous attachment, or qing. A simplistic conclusion would thus be that Tang Xianzu surrendered his faith in qing and embraced other religious beliefs at the end of his life. I wish to examine the complex and pregnant endings of both plays, showing that they should not be read simplistically, and that they cannot support the thesis of Tang’s renunciation of qing in Chapters three and four. qing has been attacked and defended repeatedly throughout history perhaps because of its affinity to yu. Chapter one will introduce the cult of qing and discuss how qing reconciles with Confucian traditions and beliefs. Chapter two examines Tang’s faith in qing within the context of Confucianism by examining closely the imagery associated with the plum. Despite his deep sympathy with the doctrine of Buddhist dharma and with Daoist tenets, Tang Xianzu was not able to accept the contradictions of the Buddhist eradication of emotions and the commendation of compassion. Nor was he convinced of the Daoist promise of immortality. Behind all this, is his faith in authentic qing, which was refined and polished by the trials of his personal life, his thwarted Confucian career, and his exposure to Buddhist and Daoist beliefs. INDEX WORDS: Tang Xianzu, Chinese Drama, Qing, Confucianism(Ru), Daoism(Dao), Buddhism(Shi). TO LOVE OR NOT TO LOVE: TANG XIANZU’S RECONCILIATION OF QING WITH RU, SHI AND DAO by LING RAO BA, Nanchang University, China, 2007 MA, Shanghai International Studies University, China, 2009 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2016 © 2016 LING RAO All Rights Reserved TO LOVE OR NOT TO LOVE—TANG XIANZU’S RECONCILIATION OF QING WITH RU, SHI AND DAO by LING RAO Major Professor: Karin Myhre Committee: Ronald Bogue Thomas Cerbu Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2016 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor Dr. Karin Myhre for her guidance and mentorship during my seven years of doctoral study at UGA. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Ronald Bogue for patiently proofreading the manuscript and for taking the trouble to skype in while being at Europe. I would also like to thank Dr. Yuanfei Wang for serving on my Committee in the past two years. I am deeply grateful that Dr. Thomas Cerbu, our Graduate Coordinator has been offering me valuable advice and who kindly serves as my Committee member and who encourages me and motivates me to move forward on my path to graduation. I also would not be able to complete my work without the generous support of our wonderful Department Head Dr. Moshi. Their patience and encouragement has kept me going and motivated me to succeed in the academic world. I am also extremely blessed to have received the unconditional love and support from my parents, and to have met so many talented students and caring friends at UGA. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 2 QING AND RU—AN OVERVIEW ...........................................................................28 3 QING THROUGH PLUM IMAGERY .......................................................................46 4 QING AND BUDDHISM ............................................................................................84 5 QING AND DAOISM ...............................................................................................118 6 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................150 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................152 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Regarded as one of the greatest playwrights in Chinese dramatic history, whose influence is comparable to that of Shakespeare,1 Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) is best known for his play The Peony Pavilion, which has touched the hearts of generations of female and male readers and audiences, fueling the cult of qing2 in late imperial China. The charms of this play have endured into modern times, as evidenced by a “spate of strikingly different productions” that debuted in Asia, North America and Europe from 1998 to 1999.3 Tang Xianzu’s masterpiece inspired subsequent scholars and playwrights, such as Zang Maoxun (1550-1620) and Feng Menglong (1574-1645) to rewrite his plays; the play also inspired female readers like Feng Xiaoqing (1595- 1612) and the three wives of Wu Wushan to compose numerous poems and commentaries. Tang Xianzu earned the reputation of being someone possessed of authentic qing to such an extent that the Qing playwright Jiang Shiquan even composed a play, Linchuan Meng, depicting the love story of Tang Xianzu and the ghost of Yu Er’niang, who allegedly admires Tang and dies prematurely from strong emotions evoked by The Peony Pavilion. Despite the importance of qing in this play, little research has been done on his interpretation of qing, beyond that of examining his preface to The Peony Pavilion and his “Epigraph for the Theatre God Qingyuan”.4 1 For example, Xu Shuofang the eminent Chinese scholar on Tang Xianzu has written an article comparing the times, language, structure and themes of the two writers and their plays. Shuofang Xu, Tang Xianzu Nianpu, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958).73-90. 2 The first chapter will discuss in details the complex layers of meaning of this word qing which include love, emotions, desires, sex, passion, etc. As will be discussed in details later, qing has been constantly attacked and defended by literati throughout the past two thousand years because of its association with yu, desires. 3 Susan Pertel Jain, "Contemplating Peonies: A Symposium on Three Productions of Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion," 2002. 4 Zhou Yude for example traces in details Tang Xianzu’s dramatic theory to earlier Confucian tradition in his “An Exposition of the ‘Theatre God, master Qing-Yuan, Temple Notes in Yi-Huang County”. Cheng Yun also bases his discussion of Tang’s theory of qing largely on the “Temple Notes” in his book Tang Xianzu and the Evolution of 2 Even less research has addressed his conception of qing in the context of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism5. Scholars have discussed the religious influence on Tang Xianzu, yet little research has traced the evolution of Tang’s understanding and representation of qing and his efforts to reconcile qing with the aforementioned three traditions. Tang’s last two plays, Nanke Ji and Handan Ji, end with the protagonists attaining Buddhahood and immortality, forsaking their previous attachment, or qing. A simplistic conclusion would thus be that Tang Xianzu surrendered his faith in qing and embraced other religious beliefs at the end of his life. If this indeed were the case, the popularity of the cult of qing, which so affected many talented female readers that they died a premature death, would be deeply ironic6. Moreover, since Tang’s deeply influential dramatic theory builds upon the notion of authentic qing, the entire theory would crumble if its foundation were undermined. This dissertation thus aims to explore how Tang Xianzu has reconciled qing with various philosophical and religious influences and whether his last two plays reflect a departure from his vehement advocacy of qing. Late-Ming Drama 湯顯祖與晚明戲曲的嬗變. 5 There were efforts examining Tang Xianzu’s influence by individual religions, but not on how ideologies have influenced his interpretation and understanding of qing or indeed how qing has evolved and reconciled with the mainstream philosophy. Zheng Peikai examines Tang Xianzu’s influence by Buddhism in his book 《湯顯祖與晚明文化》；Dai Jicheng argues that Tang Xianzu’s attachment to the world prevents him from agreeing with Monk Daguan’s teaching in his article “紫柏大師與湯顯祖”; Huang Xinyu also challenges the idea that Tang Xianzu’s Nanke Ji is a product of Monk Daguan’s Buddhist influence in her article “論湯顯祖《南柯記》之佛教觀點的展現”;呂凱 examines the Daoist influence in Handan Ji in his article “湯顯祖邯鄲記的道化思想和明代中業以後的社會”; Cheng Yun and Xu Shuofang also briefly touch upon Tang Xianzu’s exposure to Buddhism and Daoism; C.T. Hsia also points out that Tang Xianzu’s last two plays represent an aberration because of the Daoist and Buddhist messages and argues that it is hard to estimate Daguan’s influence on Tang Xianzu in his article “Time and the Human Condition in the Plays of T’ang Hsien-tsu” in Debary’s book Self and Society in Ming Thought. Yet no research looks at the relationship between qing and these religious influences. Nor do they examine the endings of Tang Xianzu’s last two plays, which tend to be read literally and thus simplistically. The irony presented in the endings should not be ignored and

Load more